CHAr. XXIV.] 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 
509 
the past history of the African and Asiatic continents, which it 
is shown are such as to account for all the main peculiarities of 
the fauna of these islands without having recourse to the 
hypothesis of a now-submerged Lemurian continent. Consider- 
able evidence is further adduced to show that “ Lemuria ” is a 
myth, since not only is its existence unnecessary, but it can be 
proved that it would not explain the actual facts of distribution. 
The origin of the interesting Mascarene wingless birds is dis- 
cussed, and the main peculiarities of the remarkable flora 
of Madagascar and the Mascarene islands pointed out ; while it 
is shown that all these phenomena are to be explained on the 
general principles of the permanence of the great oceans and 
the comparatively slight fluctuations of the land area, and by 
taking account of established palaeontological facts. 
There remain two other islands — Celebes and New Zealand, 
which are classed as “ anomalous,” the one because it is almost 
impossible to place it in any of the six zoological regions’ or 
determine whether it has ever been actually joined to a 
continent — the other because it combines the characteristics 
of continental and oceanic islands. 
The peculiarities of the Celebesian fauna have already been 
dwelt upon in several previous works, but they are so remark- 
able and so unique that they cannot be omitted in a treatise 
on “ Insular Faunas ; ” and here, as in the case of Borneo and 
Java, fuller consideration and the application of the general 
principles laid down in our First Part, lead to a solution of the 
problem at once more simple and more satisfactory than any 
which have been previously proposed. I now look upon Celebes 
as an outlying portion of the great Asiatic continent of Miocene 
times, which either by submergence or some other cause had 
lost the greater portion of its animal inhabitants, and since then 
has remained more or less completely isolated from every other 
land. It has thus preserved a fragment of a very ancient fauna 
along with a number of later types which have reached it from 
surrounding islands by the ordinary means of dispersal. This 
sufficiently explains all the peculiar affinities of its animals, 
though the peculiar and distinctive characters of some of them 
remain as mysterious as ever. 
