432 
ISLAND LIFE. 
[part II. 
both cases to the same conclusion, and forbids us to rank it as 
a strictly continental island on the Asiatic side. But facts of 
a very similar character are equally opposed to the idea of 
a former land-connection with Australia or New Guinea, or 
even with the Moluccas. The numerous marsupials of those 
countries are all wanting in Celebes, except the phalangers of 
the genus Cuscus, and these arboreal creatures are very liable 
to be carried across narrow seas on trees uprooted by earth- 
quakes or floods. The terrestrial cassowaries are equally absent ; 
and thus we can account for the presence of all the Moluccan 
or Australian types actually found in Celebes without supposing 
any land-connection on this side during the Tertiary period. 
The presence of the Celebes ape in the island of Batchian, 
and of the babirusa in Bouru, can be sufficiently explained by 
a somewhat closer approximation of the respective lands, or by 
a few intervening islands which have since disappeared, or it 
may even be due to human agency. 
If the explanation now given of the peculiar features presented 
by the fauna of Celebes be the correct one, we are fully justified 
in classing it as an “anomalous island,” since it possesses a 
small but very remarkable mammalian fauna, without ever 
having been directly united with any continent or extensive 
land; and, both by what it has and what it wants, occupies 
such an exactly intermediate position between the Oriental and 
Australian regions that it will perhaps ever remain a mere 
matter of opinion with which it should properly be associated. 
Forming, as it does, the western limit of such typical Aus- 
tralian groups as the Marsupials among mammalia, and the 
Trichoglossidac and Meliphagidse among birds, and being so 
strikingly deficient in all the more characteristic Oriental 
families and genera of both classes, I have always placed it in 
the Australian Region ; but it may perhaps with equal propriety 
be left out of both till a further knowledge of its geology enables 
us to determine its early history with more precision. 
Peculiarities of the Insects of Celebes . — The only other class of 
animals in Celebes, of which we have a tolerable knowledge, is 
that of insects, among which we meet with peculiarities of a 
very remarkable kind, and such as are found in no other island 
