INTRODUCTION. 
When we first planned a treatise on the Birds of Celebes, we soon found 
that it would he quite impossible to restrict ourselves to the mainland, this 
is everywhere surrounded by larger or smaller islands which are ^ oon”cted 
with it by their Avifaunas that they could not be left out; at the same t 
proved impossible to defiue a natural zoological froutrer bot»oence tarn of these 
islands and the adjacent ones. Our frontispiece-rnajr shown the limits 
upon, viz. the inclusion of the Talaut Islands in the north, the Sula Islands 
the east, and the Djampea Group in the south, though at each of thes i 
elements from, respectively, the Philippines, the Moluccas, and the Lesser Su 
Islands are very marked. The boundary so chosen adjoins to the north e 
southern limit of the Philippines, as defined by Tweeddale, Worcester and 
Bourns, and others; to the east it coincides with Salvador! s western boi ei 
as drawn in his “Ornitologia della Papuasia e delle Molluche to t e wes 
it follows the eastern boundary of Borneo, as adopted in Everett s List ot tne 
Birds of the Bornean Group”, and by other writers; to the south it “es i 
all the islands between Celebes and the Lesser Sundas. The book may 
be said to fill up an ornithological gap, and the bounds as chosen appeal a 
to be the most natural, except possibly (?) in the case of the Djampea G c p. 
Moreover, the Avifauna of the adjacent groups often gives a , 
atiou of non-Celebesian forms in Celebes; it would, therefore, e in 
to leave them out. 
Meyer & -Wiglesworth, Birds of Celebes (May 4th 1898). 
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