About One-Half Of The New Guinea Genera Are Found Also In
Australia, About One-Third In India And The Indo-Malay Islands.
A very curious fact, not hitherto sufficiently noticed, is the
appearance of a pure Malay element in the birds of New Guinea.
We
find two species of Eupetes, a curious Malayan genus allied to
the forked-tail water-chats; two of Alcippe, an Indian and Malay
wren-like form; an Arachnothera, quite resembling the spider-
catching honeysuckers of Malacca; two species of Gracula, the
Mynahs of India; and a curious little black Prionochilus, a saw-
billed fruit pecker, undoubtedly allied to the Malayan form,
although perhaps a distinct genus. Now not one of these birds, or
anything allied to them, occurs in the Moluccas, or (with one
exception) in Celebes or Australia; and as they are most of them
birds of short flight, it is very difficult to conceive how or
when they could have crossed the space of more than a thousand
miles, which now separates them from their nearest allies. Such
facts point to changes of land and sea on a large scale, and at a
rate which, measured by the time required for a change of
species, must be termed rapid. By speculating on such changes, we
may easily see how partial waves of immigration may have entered
New Guinea, and how all trace of their passage may have been
obliterated by the subsequent disappearance of the intervening
land.
There is nothing that the study of geology teaches us that is
more certain or more impressive than the extreme instability of
the earth's surface. Everywhere beneath our feet we find proofs
that what is land has been sea, and that where oceans now spread
out has once been land; and that this change from sea to land,
and from land to sea, has taken place, not once or twice only,
but again and again, during countless ages of past time. Now the
study of the distribution of animal life upon the present surface
of the earth, causes us to look upon this constant interchange of
land and sea - this making and unmaking of continents, this
elevation and disappearance of islands - as a potent reality,
which has always and everywhere been in progress, and has been
the main agent in determining the manner in which living things
are now grouped and scattered over the earth's surface. And when
we continually come upon such little anomalies of distribution as
that just now described, we find the only rational explanation of
them, in those repeated elevations and depressions which have
left their record in mysterious, but still intelligible
characters on the face of organic nature.
The insects of New Guinea are less known than the birds, but they
seem almost equally remarkable for fine forms and brilliant
colours. The magnificent green and yellow Ornithopterae are
abundant, and have most probably spread westward from this point
as far as India. Among the smaller butterflies are several
peculiar genera of Nymphalidae and Lycaenidae, remarkable for
their large size, singular markings, or brilliant coloration.
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