The Natives Everywhere Eat Their Flesh, And As Their Motions Are So Slow, Easily Catch Them By Climbing; So That It Is Wonderful They Have Not Been Exterminated.

It may be, however, that their dense woolly fur protects them from birds of prey, and the islands they

Live in are too thinly inhabited for man to be able to exterminate them. The figure represents Cuscus ornatus, a new species discovered by me in Batchian, and which also inhabits Ternate. It is peculiar to the Moluccas, while the two other species which inhabit Ceram are found also in New Guinea and Waigiou.

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. 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.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 67 of 213
Words from 34445 to 34965 of 111511