Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
during volcanic eruptions in Java; and it does not seem improbable that once in a thousand,
or ten thousand years, there should have occurred such a favourable combination of circum-
stances as would lead to the migration of two or three land animals from one island to an-
other. This is all that we need ask to account for the very scanty and fragmentary group of
Mammalia which now inhabit the large island of Timor. The deer may very probably have
been introduced by man, for the Malays often keep tame fawns; and it may not require a
thousand, or even five hundred years, to establish new characters in an animal removed to a
country so different in climate and vegetation as is Timor from the Moluccas. I have not
mentioned horses, which are often thought to be wild in Timor, because there are no
grounds whatever for such a belief. The Timor ponies have every one an owner, and are
quite as much domesticated animals as the cattle on a South American hacienda.
I have dwelt at some length on the origin of the Timorese fauna, because it appears to me
a most interesting and instructive problem. It is very seldom that we can trace the animals of
a district so clearly as we can in this case, to two definite sources; and still more rarely that
they furnish such decisive evidence, of the time, and the manner, and the proportions of
their introduction. We have here a group of Oceanic Islands in miniature—islands which
have never formed part of the adjacent lands, although so closely approaching them; and
their productions have the characteristics of true Oceanic Islands slightly modified. These
characteristics are, the absence of all Mammalia except bats, and the occurrence of peculiar
species of birds, insects, and land shells, which, though found nowhere else, are plainly re-
lated to those of the nearest land. Thus, we have an entire absence of Australian mammals,
and the presence of only a few stragglers from the west, which can be accounted for in the
manner already indicated. Bats are tolerably abundant. Birds have many peculiar species,
with a decided relationship to those of the two nearest masses of land. The insects have sim-
ilar relations with the birds. As an example, four species of the Papilionidæ are peculiar to
Timor, three others are also found in Java, and one in Australia. Of the four peculiar species
two are decided modifications of Javanese forms, while the others seem allied to those of
the Moluccas and Celebes. The very few land shells known are all, curiously enough, allied
to or identical with Moluccan or Celebes forms. The Pieridæ (white and yellow butterflies)
which wander more, and from frequenting open grounds are more liable to be blown out to
sea, seem about equally related to those of Java, Australia, and the Moluccas.
It has been objected to Mr. Darwin's theory,—of Oceanic Islands having never been con-
nected with the mainland,—that this would imply that their animal population was a matter
of chance; it has been termed the '
flotsam
and
jetsam
theory,' and it has been maintained
that nature does not work by the 'chapter of accidents.' But in the case which I have here
