2. SEASONS AND WINDS 
IN THE EAST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 
See Maps III and IV. 
The red colour on the maps denotes “fine season”, the blue colour “rainy season , 
while purple distinguishes districts where it would he incorrect to term the period either 
wet or fine. The aiTOws fly with the wind. The short arrows distributed over the 
Archipelago show the persistence of the wind in the given direction (those grouped 
3 mm apart denoting 50 per cent of the winds as coming more or less directly froin 
the quarter indicated, those 4 mm apart denoting 60 per cent, and so on). The long 
arrows, chiefly outside the Archipelago, demonstrate the prevailing direction of the wind 
during the six months concerned, ivithout reference to percentage. 
It should be observed that our sketch-maps are more or less arbitrary and 
hyjmthetical, for data have not been accurately recorded from all quarts, and others are 
hidden in papers in periodicals or in special works, and were not consulted, as lying 
too far from the aims of this book. We have been obliged to satisfy ourselves with 
an approximately correct picture of the winds and rains of the Archipelago, and this 
remark refeis both to the arrows on our maps and to the colours. The general results 
and general points of view of our reasoning will not be greatly afl-'ected, even if some one 
should prove that there are faults here and thei'e in our maps, which we are very 
ready to concede. 
Among the many causes which effect the dispersal and the distribution of 
birds (cf. A. li. Wallace, Geogr. Distr. Anim. vol. I, chap. Ill, 187G), winds and 
seasons play an important part — the winds directly by carrying birds involun- 
tarily to new lands, or in offering barriers to their wandering across certain 
zones; the seasons indirectly by their influence upon the abundance or scarcity 
of food, which forms the strongest of several motives for migration and local 
movements. In temperate and cold climes the alternation of the seasons, summer 
and winter, is, as it were, accompanied by a flow and ebb of vital energy in 
the vegetable kingdom expressed in the sprouting of foliage and the fall of the 
leaf of deciduous trees, and, at the approach of the cold season, insects, such as 
feed upon leaves and flowers, etc., hibernate or perish with the disappearance 
of their food, seeds and grain are buried or hidden under snow, molluscs and 
Meyer & Wiglesworth, Birds of Celebes (May 4ih, lS9b). 
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