In Place Of The Excessive Poverty Of Mammals Which Characterises
The Moluccas, We Have A Very Rich Display Of The Feathered
Tribes.
The number of species of birds at present known from the
various islands of the Molluccan group is 265, but of these only
70 belong to the usually abundant tribes of the waders and
swimmers, indicating that these are very imperfectly known.
As
they are also pre-eminently wanderers, and are thus little fitted
for illustrating the geographical distribution of life in a
limited area, we will here leave them out of consideration and
confine our attention only to the 195 land birds.
When we consider that all Europe, with its varied climate and
vegetation, with every mile of its surface explored, and with the
immense extent of temperate Asia and Africa, which serve as
storehouses, from which it is continually recruited, only
supports 25l species of land birds as residents or regular
immigrants, we must look upon the numbers already procured in the
small and comparatively unknown islands of the Moluccas as
indicating a fauna of fully average richness in this department.
But when we come to examine the family groups which go to make up
this number, we find the most curious deficiencies in some,
balanced by equally striking redundancy in other. Thus if we
compare the birds of the Moluccas with those of India, as given
in Mr. Jerdon's work, we find that the three groups of the
parrots, kingfishers, and pigeons, form nearly _one-third_ of the
whole land-birds in the former, while they amount to only _one-
twentieth_ in the latter country.
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