4 
ISLAND LIFE. 
[rART 1, 
practised ornithologist to tell the difference. If he is fond of 
insects he notices many butterflies and a host of beetles which, 
though on close examination they are found to he distinct from 
ours, are yet of the same general aspect, and seem just what 
might be expected in any part of Europe. There are also of 
course many birds and insects which are quite new and peculiar, 
but these are by no means so numerous or conspicuous as to- 
remove the general impression of a wonderful resemblance 
between the productions of such remote islands as Britain and 
Yesso. 
Now let an inhabitant of Australia sail to New Zealand, a 
distance of less than thirteen hundred miles, and he will find 
himself in a country whose productions are totally unlike those 
of his own. Kangaroos and wombats there are none, the birds 
are almost all entirely new, insects are very scarce and quite 
unlike the handsome or strange Australian forms, while even 
the vegetation is all changed, and no gum-tree, or wattle, or 
grass-tree meets the traveller’s eye. 
But there are some more striking cases even than this, of the 
diversity of the productions of countries not far apart. In the 
Malay Archipelago there are two islands, named Bali and 
Lombok, each about as large as Corsica, and separated by a 
strait only fifteen miles wide at its narrowest part. Yet these 
islands differ far more from each other in their birds and quad- 
rupeds than do England and Japan. The birds of the one are 
extremely imlikc those of the other, the difference being such 
as to strike even the most ordinary observer. Bali has red and 
green woodpeckers, barbets, weaver-birds, and black-and-white 
magpie-robins, none of which are found in Lombok, where, 
however, we find screaming cockatoos and friar-birds, and the 
strange mound-building megapodes, which are all equally un- 
known in Bah. Many of the kingfishers, crow-shrikes, and 
other birds, though of the same general form, are of very distinct 
species ; and though a considerable number of birds are the same 
in both islands the difference is none the less remarkable — as 
proving that mere distance is one of the least important of the 
causes which have determined the likeness or unlikeness in the 
animals of different countries. 
