CHAP. XVIII.] 
JAPAN AND FORMOSA. 
373 
it seems probable that few, if any islands of approximately the 
same size and equally removed from a continent will be found to 
equal it in the number and variety of their higher animals. The 
outline map (at page 364) shows that Formosa is connected with 
the mainland by a submerged bank, the hundred-fathom line 
including it along with Hainan to the south-west and J apan on 
the north-east ; while the line of two-hundred fathoms includes 
also the Madjico-Sima and Loo-Choo Islands, and may, perhaps, 
mark out approximately the last great extension of the Asiatic 
continent, the submergence of which isolated these islands 
from the mainland. 
Animal Life of Formosa . — We are at present acquainted 
with 35 species of mammalia, and 128 species of land-birds 
from Formosa, fourteen of the former and forty-three of the 
latter being peculiar, while the remainder inhabit also some 
part of the continent or adjacent islands. This proportion of 
peculiar species is perhaps (as regards the birds) the highest to 
be met with in any island which can be classed as both conti- 
nental and recent, and this, in all probability, implies that the 
epoch of separation is somewhat remote. It was not, however, 
remote enough to reach back to a time when the continental 
fauna was very different from what it is now, for we find all the 
chief types of living Asiatic mammalia represented in this small 
island. Thus we have monkeys; insectivora; numerous car- 
nivora; pigs, deer, antelopes, and cattle among ungulata; 
numerous rodents, and the edentate Manis, — a very fair repre- 
sentation of Asiatic mammals, all being of known genera, and of 
species either absolutely identical with some still living else- 
where or very closely allied to them. The birds exhibit analo- 
gous phenomena, with the exception that we have here two 
peculiar and very interesting genera. 
But besides the amount of specific and generic modification 
that has occurred, we have another indication of the lapse 
of time in the peculiar relations of a large proportion of the 
Formosan animals, which show that a great change in the dis- 
tribution of Asiatic species must have taken place since the 
separation of the island from the continent. Before pointing 
these out it will be advantageous to give lists of the mammalia 
