I Do Not Think That Timor Was Ever Actually Connected With Australia,
Because Such A Large Number Of Very Abundant
And characteristic groups
of Australian birds are quite absent, and not a single Australian
mammal has entered Timor - which would
Certainly not have been the case
had the lands been actually united. Such groups as the bower birds
(Ptilonorhynchus), the black and red cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus), the
blue wrens (Malurus), the crowshrikes (Cracticus), the Australian
shrikes (Falcunculus and Colluricincla), and many others, which abound
all over Australia, would certainly have spread into Timor if it had
been united to that country, or even if for any long time it had
approached nearer to it than twenty miles. Neither do any of the most
characteristic groups of Australian insects occur in Timor; so that
everything combines to indicate that a strait of the sea has always
separated it from Australia, but that at one period this strait was
reduced to a width of about twenty miles.
But at the time when this narrowing of the sea took place in one
direction, there must have been a greater separation at the other end
of the chain, or we should find more equality in the numbers of
identical and representative species derived from each extremity. It
is true that the widening of the strait at the Australian end by
subsidence, would, by putting a stop to immigration and intercrossing
of individuals from the mother country, have allowed full scope to the
causes which have led to the modification of the species; while the
continued stream of immigrants from Java, would, by continual
intercrossing, check such modification.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 285 of 419
Words from 77742 to 78013
of 114260
