| OCR Text |
Show 426 ISLAND LIFE. (rART IT. - ·-- ..... --- --------- from each other and from the adjacent Pacific anJ Indian Oceans (see map). This peculiar formation of the sea-bottom probably indicates that this area has been the seat of great lo~al upheavals and subsidences; and it is quite in accordance With this view that we find the Moluccas, while closely agreeing with New Guinea in their forms of life, yet strikingly deficient in many important groups, and exhibiting an altogether povertystriken appearance as regards the higher animals. It is a suggestive fact that the Philippine Islands ~ear .an exactly parallel relation to Borneo, being equa1ly deficient m many of the higher groups; and here too, in the Sooloo Sea, we find a similar enclosed basin of great depth. Hence we may in both cases connect, on the one hand, the extensive area of land-surface and of adjacent sha1low sea with a long period of stability and a consequent rich development of the forms of life; and, on the other hand, a highly broken land-surface with the adjacent seas of great but very unequal depths, with a period of disturbance, probably involving extensive submersions of the land, resulting in a scanty and fragmentary vertebrate fauna. Zoology of Celebes.-The zoology of Celebes differs so remarkably from that of both the great divisions of the Archipelago above indicated, that it is very difficult to decide in which to place it. It possesses only about sixteen species of terrestrial mammalia, so that it is at once distinguished from Borneo and Java by its extreme poverty in this class. Of this small number four belong to the Moluccan and Australian fauna-there being two marsupials of the genus Cuscus, and two forest rats said to be allied to Australian types. The remaining twelve species are, generally speaking, of Malayan or Asiatic types, but some of them are so peculiar that they have no near allies in any part of the world; while the rest are of the ordinary Malay type or even identical with Malayan species, and some of these may be recent introductions through human agency. These twelve species of Asiatic type will be now enumerated. They consist of five pc.culiar squirrels -a group unknown farther east ; a peculiar species of wild pig; a deer so closely allied to the CeTvns hippelaphus of Borneo that it may well have been introdnce<l by man bot CIIAP. XX.) CELEBES. 427 here and in the Moluccas; a civet, Viverra tangalunga, common in all the Malay Islands, and also perhaps introduced; the curious Malayan tarsier ( Tarsius spectr'lfJm) said to be only found in a small island off the coast ;-and besides these, three remarkable animals, all of large size and all quite unlike anything found in the Malay Islands or even in Asia. These are a black and almost tailless baboon-like ape (Oynopithecus nigrescens); an antelopean buffalo (Anoa depnssicornis), and the strange babirusa (Babirusa alfurus). Neither of these three animals last mentioned have any close allies elsewhere, and their presence in Celebes may be considered the crucial fact which must give us the clue to the past history of the island. Let us then see what they teach us. The ape is apparently somewhat intermediate between the great baboons of Africa and the short-tailed macaques of Asia, but its cranium shows a nearer approach to the former group, in its flat projecting muzzle, large superciliary crests, and maxillary ridges. The anoa, though anatomically allied to the buffaloes, externally more resembles the bovine antelopes of Africa; while the babirusa is altogether unlike any other living member of the swine family, the canines of the upper jaws growing directly upwards like horns, forming a spiral curve over the eyes, instead of downwards, as in all other mammalia. An approach to this peculiarity is made by the African wart-hogs, in which the upper tusk grows out laterally and then curves up; but these animals are not otherwise closely allieJ to the babirusa. Probable derivation of the Mammals of Celebes.-It is clear that we have here a group of extremely peculiar, and, in all probability, very ancient forms, which have been preserved to us by isolation in Celebes, just as the· monotrcmes and marsupials have been preserved in Australia and so many of the lemurs and Insectivora in Madagascar. And this compels us to look upon the existing island as a fragment of some ancient land, once perhaps forming part of the great northern continent, but separated from it far earlier than Borneo, Sumatra, and Java. The exceeding scantiness of the mammalian fauna, bowever, remains to be accounted for. We have seen that Formosa a . much smaller island, contains more than twice as man |
