Principles of Geology " (10th edit. vol. ii. p. 355) he adduces evidences to show that pigs have swum many miles at sea, and are able to swim with great ease and swiftness. I have myself seen a wild pig swimming across the arm of the sea that separates Singapore from the peninsula of Malacca, and we thus have explained the curious fact that, of all the large mammals of the Indian region, pigs alone extend beyond the Moluccas and as far as New Guinea, although it is somewhat curious that they have not found their way to Australia.

The little shrew (Sorex myosurus), which is common in Sumatra, Borneo, and Java, is also found in the larger islands. of the Moluccas, to which it may have been accidentally conveyed in native praus.

This completes the list of the placental mammals which are so characteristic of the Indian region; and we see that, with the single exception of the pig, all may very probably have been introduced by man, since all except the pig are of species identical with those now abounding in the great Malay Islands, or in Celebes.

The four remaining mammals are Marsupials, an order of the class Mammalia which is very characteristic of the Australian fauna; and these are probably true natives of the Moluccas, since they are either of peculiar species, or, if found elsewhere, are natives only of New Guinea or North Australia. The first is the small flying opossum (Belideus ariel), a beautiful little animal, exactly like a small flying squirrel in appearance, but belonging to the marsupial order. The other three are species of the curious genus Cuscus, which is peculiar to the Austro-Malayan region. These are opossumlike animals, with a long prehensile tail, of which the terminal half is generally bare. They have small heads, large eyes, and a dense covering of woolly fur, which is often pure white, with irregular black spots or blotches, or sometimes ashy brown with or without white spots. They live in trees, feeding upon the leaves, of which they devour large quantities. They move about slowly, and are difficult to kill, owing to the thickness of their fur, and their tenacity of life. A heavy charge of shot will often lodge in the skin and do them no harm, and even breaking the spine or pierc ing the brain will not kill them for some hours. The natives

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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 characterizes 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 Moluccan 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 store-houses, from which it is continually recruited, only supports 257 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 others. 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 seventyeight genera in which the Moluccan land-birds may be classed, no less than seventy are characteristic of New 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 immi

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gration 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 have 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. The considerable length of time the Moluccas have remained isolated is further indicated by the occurrence of two peculiar genera of birds, Semioptera and Lycocorax, which are found nowhere else.

We are able to divide this small archipelago into two wellmarked groups-that of Ceram, including also Bouru, Amboyna, Banda, and Ké, and that of Gilolo, including Morty, Batchian, Obi, Ternate, and other small islands. These divisions have each a considerable number of peculiar species, no less than fifty-five being found in the Ceram group only; and besides this, most of the separate islands have some species peculiar to themselves. Thus Morty Island has a peculiar kingfisher, honeysucker, and starling; Ternate has a groundthrush (Pitta) and a fly-catcher; Banda has a pigeon, a shrike, and a Pitta; Ké has two fly-catchers, a Zosterops, a shrike, a king-crow, and a cuckoo; and the remote Timor-laut, which should probably come into the Moluccan group, bas a cockatoo and lory as its only known birds, and both are of peculiar species.

The Moluccas are especially rich in the parrot tribe, no less than twenty-two species, belonging to ten genera, inhabiting them. Among these is the large red-crested cockatoo, so commonly seen alive in Europe, two handsome red parrots of the genus Eclectus, and five of the beautiful crimson lories, which are almost exclusively confined to these islands and the New Guinea group. The pigeons are hardly less abundant or beautiful, twenty-one species being known, including twelve of the beautiful green fruit-pigeons, the smaller kinds of which

are ornamented with the most brilliant patches of color on the head and the under surface. Next to these come the kingfishers, including sixteen species, almost all of which are beautiful, and many are among the most brilliantly-colored birds that exist.

One of the most curious groups of birds, the Megapodii, or mound-makers, is very abundant in the Moluccas. They are gallinaceous birds, about the size of a small fowl, and generally of a dark ashy or sooty color, and they have remarkably large and strong feet and long claws. They are allied to the "Maleo" of Celebes, of which an account has already been given, but they differ in habits, most of these birds frequenting the scrubby jungles along the sea-shore, where the soil is sandy, and there is a considerable quantity of débris, consisting of sticks, shells, sea-weed, leaves, etc. Of this rubbish the Megapodius forms immense mounds, often six or eight feet high and twenty or thirty feet in diameter, which they are enabled to do with comparative ease by means of their large feet, with which they can grasp and throw backward a quantity of material. In the centre of this mound, at a depth of two or three feet, the eggs are deposited, and are hatched by the gentle heat produced by the fermentation of the vegetable matter of the mound. When I first saw these mounds in the island of Lombock I could hardly believe that they were made by such small birds, but I afterward met with them frequently, and have once or twice come upon the birds engaged in making them. They run a few steps backward, grasping a quantity of loose material in one foot, and throw it a long way behind them. When once properly buried the eggs seem to be no more cared for, the young birds working their way up through the heap of rubbish, and running off at once into the forest. They come out of the egg covered with thick downy feathers, and have no tail, although the wings are fully developed.

I was so fortunate as to discover a new species (Megapodius wallacei), which inhabits Gilolo, Ternate, and Bouru. It is the handsomest bird of the genus, being richly banded with reddish-brown on the back and wings, and it differs from the other species in its habits. It frequents the forests of the interior, and comes down to the sea-beach to deposit its eggs;