All These Striking
Peculiarities Are Found Also In Those Islands Which Form The
Austro-Malayan Division Of The Archipelago.
The great contrast between the two divisions of the Archipelago
is nowhere so abruptly exhibited as on passing from the island of
Bali to that of Lombock, where the two regions are in closest
proximity.
In Bali we have barbets, fruit-thrushes, and
woodpeckers; on passing over to Lombock these are seen no more,
but we have abundance of cockatoos, honeysuckers, and brush-
turkeys, which are equally unknown in Bali, or any island further
west. [I was informed, however, that there were a few cockatoos
at one spot on the west of Bali, showing that the intermingling
of the productions of these islands is now going on.] The strait
is here fifteen miles wide, so that we may pass in two hours from
one great division of the earth to another, differing as
essentially in their animal life as Europe does from America. If
we travel from Java or Borneo to Celebes or the Moluccas, the
difference is still more striking. In the first, the forests
abound in monkeys of many kinds, wild cats, deer, civets, and
otters, and numerous varieties of squirrels are constantly met
with. In the latter none of these occur; but the prehensile-
tailed Cuscus is almost the only terrestrial mammal seen, except
wild pigs, which are found in all the islands, and deer (which
have probably been recently introduced) in Celebes and the
Moluccas. The birds which are most abundant in the Western
Islands are woodpeckers, barbets, trogons, fruit-thrushes, and
leaf-thrushes; they are seen daily, and form the great
ornithological features of the country. In the Eastern Islands
these are absolutely unknown, honeysuckers and small lories being
the most common birds, so that the naturalist feels himself in a
new world, and can hardly realize that he has passed from the one
region to the other in a few days, without ever being out of
sight of land.
The inference that we must draw from these facts is, undoubtedly,
that the whole of the islands eastwards beyond Java and Borneo do
essentially form a part of a former Australian or Pacific
continent, although some of them may never have been actually
joined to it. This continent must have been broken up not only
before the Western Islands were separated from Asia, but probably
before the extreme southeastern portion of Asia was raised above
the waters of the ocean; for a great part of the land of Borneo
and Java is known to be geologically of quite recent formation,
while the very great difference of species, and in many cases of
genera also, between the productions of the Eastern Malay Islands
and Australia, as well as the great depth of the sea now
separating them, all point to a comparatively long period of
isolation.
It is interesting to observe among the islands themselves how a
shallow sea always intimates a recent land connexion. The Aru
Islands, Mysol, and Waigiou, as well as Jobie, agree with New
Guinea in their species of mammalia and birds much more closely
than they do with the Moluccas, and we find that they are all
united to New Guinea by a shallow sea.
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