The Philippine Islands Agree In Many Respects With Asia And The
Other Islands, But Present Some Anomalies, Which Seem To Indicate
That They Were Separated At An Earlier Period, And Have Since
Been Subject To Many Revolutions In Their Physical Geography.
Turning our attention now to the remaining portion of the
Archipelago, we shall find that all the islands from Celebes and
Lombock eastward exhibit almost as close a resemblance to
Australia and New Guinea as the Western Islands do to Asia.
It is
well known that the natural productions of Australia differ from
those of Asia more than those of any of the four ancient quarters
of the world differ from each other. Australia, in fact, stands
alone: it possesses no apes or monkeys, no cats or tigers,
wolves, bears, or hyenas; no deer or antelopes, sheep or oxen; no
elephant, horse, squirrel, or rabbit; none, in short, of those
familiar types of quadruped which are met with in every other
part of the world. Instead of these, it has Marsupials only:
kangaroos and opossums; wombats and the duckbilled Platypus. In
birds it is almost as peculiar. It has no woodpeckers and no
pheasants - families which exist in every other part of the
world; but instead of them it has the mound-making brush-turkeys,
the honeysuckers, the cockatoos, and the brush-tongued lories,
which are found nowhere else upon the globe. All these striking
peculiarities are found also in those islands which form the
Austro-Malayan division of the Archipelago.
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