Having Already, In
My Chapters On The Aru Islands And On The Birds Of Paradise,
Given Some Details Of The Natural History Of This District, I
Shall Here Confine Myself To A General Sketch Of Its Animal
Productions, And Of Their Relations To Those Of The Rest Of The
World.
New Guinea is perhaps the largest island on the globe, being a
little larger than Borneo.
It is nearly fourteen hundred miles
long, and in the widest part four hundred broad, and seems to be
everywhere covered with luxuriant forests. Almost everything that
is yet known of its natural productions comes from the north-
western peninsula, and a few islands grouped around it. These do
not constitute a tenth part of the area of the whole island, and
are so cut off from it, that their fauna may well he somewhat
different; yet they have produced us (with a very partial
exploration) no less than two hundred and fifty species of land
birds, almost all unknown elsewhere, and comprising some of the
most curious and most beautiful of the feathered tribes. It is
needless to say how much interest attaches to the far larger
unknown portion of this great island, the greatest terra
incognita that still remains for the naturalist to explore, and
the only region where altogether new and unimagined forms of life
may perhaps be found. There is now, I am happy to say, some
chance that this great country will no longer remain absolutely
unknown to us.
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