On The Other Hand, Such Wide-
Spread Groups As The Thrushes, Warblers, And Finches, Which In
India Form Nearly _One-Third_ Of All The Land-Birds, Dwindle Down
In The Moluccas To _One-Fourteenth._
The reason of these peculiarities appears to be, that the
Moluccan fauna has been almost entirely derived from that of New
Guinea, in which country the same deficiency and the same
luxuriance is to be observed.
Out of the seventy-eight genera in
which the Moluccan land-birds may be classed, no less than
seventy are characteristic of Yew Guinea, while only six belong
specially to the Indo-Malay islands. But this close resemblance
to New Guinea genera does not extend to the species, for no less
than 140 out of the 195 land-birds are peculiar to the Moluccan
islands, while 32 are found also in New Guinea, and 15 in the
Indo-Malay islands. These facts teach us, that though the birds
of this group have evidently been derived mainly from New Guinea,
yet the immigration has not been a recent one, since there has
been time for the greater portion of the species to have become
changed. We find, also, that many very characteristic New Guinea
forms lave not entered the Moluccas at all, while others found in
Ceram and Gilolo do not extend so far west as Bouru. Considering,
further, the absence of most of the New Guinea mammals from the
Moluccas, we are led to the conclusion that these islands are not
fragments which have been separated from New Guinea, but form a
distinct insular region, which has been upheaved independently at
a rather remote epoch, and during all the mutations it has
undergone has been constantly receiving immigrants from that
great and productive island.
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