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Show 430 ISLAND LIFE. (PAH'l' II. marked genus, and wh 1. c h may h ave b ee n derive.d ' either from the Malayan or tl)e :Moluccan side of the Arch1~elago. Two pecuh. ar genera of km· g fi sh ers-M onac h a lcyo. n and 01ttura-seem allied, the former to the widespread Toduamph~s and t? the Caridonax of Lombok, the latter to the Austrahan Mehdora. Another kingfisher, Ceycopsis, combines the characters of the Malayan Ceyx and the African Ispidina, and thus forms an example of an ancient generalised for.rn a.nalogous .to what occurs arnon(1' the mammalia Strepto01tta IS a pecubar form 0 • • allied to the magpies; while Basilornis (~ound a].so 1n Oeram), Enodes, and Scissirostrum, are very pecuhar starlm.gs, the .la~ter altogether unlike any other bird, and perhaps formm? a dtstmct sub-family. Meropogon is a peculiar ~ee-eater, al.hed .to the Malayan Nyctiornis; Rhamphococyx IS a ~o?1ficat10n of Phrenicophaes, a Malayan genu::; of cuckoos; Pn?n~tur~s (found also in the Philippines) is a genus of parrots <hstmgmshed by raquet-forrned tail feathers, altogether unique. in the order; w bile Me(J'acephalon is a remarkable anrl very Isolated form of the Austr~lian Megapodiidre, or mound-builders. Omitting those whose affinity may be pretty clearly traced to groups still inhabiting the islands of th~ weste:n or the eastern half of the Archipelago, we find four birds whiCh have no near allies at all, but appear to be either ancestral forms, or extreme modifications, of Asiatic or African birds-Basilornis, Enodes, Scissirostrum) Oeycopsis. These may fairly be associated with the baboon-ape, anoa, and babirusa, as indicating extreme antiquity and some communication with the Asiatic continent at a period when the forms of life and their geographical distribution differed considerably from what they are at the present time. But here again we meet with exactly the same difficulty as in the mammalia, in the comparative poverty of the types of birds now inhabiting Celebes. Although the preponderance of affinity, especially in the case of its more ancient and peculiar forms, is undoubtedly with Asia rather than with Australia; yet, still more decidedly than in the case of the mammalia, are we forbidden to suppose that it ever formed a part of the old Asiatic continent, on account of the total absence of so many CIIAP. XX.] CELEBES. 431 important and extensive groups of Asiatic birds. It is not single species or even genera, but whole families that are thus absent, and among them families which are pre-eminently characteristic of all tropical Asia. Such are the Timaliidre, or babblers, of which there are twelve genera in Borneo, and nearly thirty genera in the Oriental Region, but of which one spe~ies ~nly, hardly distingui~ha~le from a Malayan form, inhabiLs Celebes; the Phyllormth1dro, or green bulbuls, and the Py?nonotidre, or bulbuls, both absolutely ubiquitous in tropical Asia and ¥alaya., but unknown in Celebes; the Eurylremidre, or gapers, found everywhere in the great Malay Islands ; the Megalremidre, or bar bets; the Trogonidre, or trogons; and the Phasianidre, or pheasants, all pre-eminently Asiatic and Malayan but all absent from Celebes, with the exception of the common jungle-fowl, which, owing to the passion of Malays for cockfighting, may have been introduced. To these important families ma.y be added Asiatic and Malayan genera by the score;, but, confimng ourselves to these seven ubiquitous families, we must ask,-is it possible, that, at. the period when the ancestors of the peculiar Celebes mammals entered the island and when the forms of life, though distinct, could not have bee~ quite unlike those now living, it could have actually formed a part of the continent without possessing representatives of the greater part of these extensive and important families of birds? To get rid altogether of such varied and dominant types of bird-life by any subsequent process of submer,:jion is more difficult than to exterminate mammalia; and we are therefore again driven to our former conclusion-that the present land of Celebes has never (in Tertiary times) been united to the Asiatic continent, but has received its population of Asiatic forms by migration across narrow straits and intervening islands. Takin(J' into consideration the amount of affinity on the one hand, and the isolation on the other, of the Celebesian fauna, we may probably place the period of this earlier migration in the early part of the latter half of the Tertiary period, that is, in middle or late Miocene times. Celebes not strictly a Continental Island.-A study of the mammalian and of the bird-fn.una of Celebes thus leads us in |