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Show 330 VISCOUNT WALDEN ON THE BIRDS OF CELEBES. [May 2, explained and depicted by Mr. Wallace*, that it is almost unnecessary for me to add any observations of m y own on these points. " This great naturalist has shown that the principal and most striking peculiarity of the fauna of Celebes is its individuality-a generalization fully supported by the evidence furnished by its birds ; and it is the chief object of this paper to give a list of all the birds authentically recorded as inhabitants of Celebes, and to show in some detail the zoogeographical relation of its genera and species. " Our knowledge of the Celebean ornis has been principally derived from the discoveries of the Dutch travellers Forsten, Von Rosenberg, and Bernstein, and from those of Mr. Wallace. Yet although the Dutch naturalists and our great English traveller ransacked those parts of Celebes they traversed or resided in, they all more or less covered the same ground. The larger portion of the island (fully two-thirds of its area) still remains ornithologically unknown. "All the species yet described from Celebes appear to have been obtained from the districts of Macassar and Bonthain in the south, and from the districts of Gorontalo and Minahassa in the north. That part of the island which stretches north from about the fifth parallel S. lat. to the Gulf of Tontoli, and west thence to Limbalto, the lesser of the two eastern limbs of the island, the whole of the south-east limb, and all the central country from which these limbs extend seem to have never been explored by an ornithologist. " The group of islands of which Peling is the largest, and which are only separated from the Sula Islands by the Greyhound Straits, the Togian or Schildpad Islands in the Gulf of Tomini, the islands of Pagasane and of Bceton, the island of Saleyer, with its train of smaller satellites almost connecting Celebes with Flores, are nearly wholly unknown. The Sanghir Islands in the north, and the Sula Islands to the east, although as yet only partially investigated, have been shown to possess some species identical with those found in Celebes; consequently they have been regarded by recent authors as forming along with Celebes a separate zoological subarea. But I propose in the following list to include only those species of birds which are known to inhabit the island of Celebes itself. A more definite and more accurate idea of the peculiarities of the Celebean ornis will thus be presented than if genera which occur in the Sula Islands were placed side by side with Celebean genera. If we threw together the ornis of the Sula Islands with that of Celebes we shall find non-Celebean genera (such as Criniger, Cegx, Platycercus, Pachycephala, and Monarcha) appearing in the list; and the really anomalous character of the Celebean avifauna actually existing on the main island would thereby be apparently greatly modified. " Mr. Wallace (op. cit. i. p. 425) has estimated the number of known Celebean species of birds at one hundred and ninety-one. I have only been able to add two more to that number; yet there are doubtless many more species represented by Celebean examples in the museums of Europe. On the other hand, many species have * Malay Archipelago, i. chap, xviii. |