I Myself Assiduously Collected Birds In Celebes
For Nearly Ten Months, And My Assistant, Mr. Allen, Spent Two
Months In The Sula Islands.
The Dutch naturalist Forsten spent
two years in Northern Celebes (twenty years before my visit), and
collections of birds had also been sent to Holland from Macassar.
The French ship of discovery, L'Astrolabe, also touched at Menado
and procured collections.
Since my return home, the Dutch
naturalists Rosenberg and Bernstein have made extensive
collections both in North Celebes and in the Sula islands; yet
all their researches combined have only added eight species of
land birds to those forming part of my own collection - a fact
which renders it almost certain that there are very few more to
discover.
Besides Salayer and Boutong on the south, with Peling and Bungay
on the east, the three islands of the Sula (or Zula) Archipelago
also belong zoologically to Celebes, although their position is
such that it would seem more natural to group them with the
Moluccas. About 48 land birds are now known from the Sula group,
and if we reject from these, five species which have a wide range
over the Archipelago, the remainder are much more characteristic
of Celebes than of the Moluccas. Thirty-one species are identical
with those of the former island, and four are representatives of
Celebes forms, while only eleven are Moluccan species, and two
more representatives.
But although the Sula islands belong to Celebes, they are so
close to Bouru and the southern islands of the Gilolo group, that
several purely Moluccan forms have migrated there, which are
quite unknown to the island of Celebes itself; the whole thirteen
Moluccan species being in this category, thus adding to the
productions of Celebes a foreign element which does not really
belong to it. In studying the peculiarities of the Celebesian
fauna, it will therefore be well to consider only the productions
of the main island.
The number of land birds in the island of Celebes is 128, and
from these we may, as before, strike out a small number of
species which roam over the whole Archipelago (often from India
to the Pacific), and which therefore only serve to disguise the
peculiarities of individual islands. These are 20 in number, and
leave 108 species which we may consider as more especially
characteristic of the island. On accurately comparing these with
the birds of all the surrounding countries, we find that only
nine extend into the islands westward, and nineteen into the
islands eastward, while no less than 80 are entirely confined to
the Celebesian fauna - a degree of individuality which,
considering the situation of the island, is hardly to be equalled
in any other part of the world. If we still more closely examine
these 80 species, we shall be struck by the many peculiarities of
structure they present, and by the curious affinities with
distant parts of the world which many of them seem to indicate.
These points are of so much interest and importance that it will
be necessary to pass in review all those species which are
peculiar to the island, and to call attention to whatever is most
worthy of remark.
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