Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
present purpose are much the most important, must be very nearly complete. I myself as-
siduously collected birds in Celebes for nearly ten months, and my assistant, Mr. Allen,
spent two months in the Sula islands. The Dutch naturalist Forsten
*
spent two years in
Northern Celebes (twenty years before my visit), and collections of birds had also been sent
to Holland from Macassar. The French ship of discovery,
L'Astrolabe
,
†
also touched at
Menado and procured collections. Since my return home, the Dutch naturalists Rosenberg
‡
and Bernstein
§
have made extensive collections both in North Celebes and in the Sula is-
lands; yet all their researches combined, have only added eight species of land birds to those
forming part of my own collection—a fact which renders it almost certain that there are very
few more to discover.
Besides Salayer and Boutong on the south, with Peling and Bungay on the east, the three
islands of the Sula (or Zula) Archipelago also belong zoologically to Celebes, although their
position is such, that it would seem more natural to group them with the Moluccas. About
48 land birds are now known from the Sula group, and if we reject from these, five species
which have a wide range over the Archipelago, the remainder are much more characteristic
of Celebes than of the Moluccas. Thirty-one species are identical with those of the former
island, and four are representatives of Celebes forms, while only eleven are Moluccan spe-
cies, and two more representatives.
But although the Sula islands belong to Celebes, they are so close to Bouru and the south-
ern islands of the Gilolo group, that several purely Moluccan forms have migrated there,
which are quite unknown to the island of Celebes itself; the whole thirteen Moluccan spe-
cies being in this category, thus adding to the productions of Celebes a foreign element
which does not really belong to it. In studying the peculiarities of the Celebesian fauna, it
will therefore be well to consider only the productions of the main island.
The number of land birds in the island of Celebes is 128, and from these we may, as be-
fore, strike out a small number of species which roam over the whole Archipelago (often
from India to the Pacific), and which therefore only serve to disguise the peculiarities of in-
dividual islands. These are 20 in number, and leave 108 species which we may consider as
more especially characteristic of the island. On accurately comparing these with the birds of
all the surrounding countries, we find that only nine extend into the islands westward, and
nineteen into the islands eastward, while no less than 80 are entirely confined to the Celebe-
sian fauna—a degree of individuality, which, considering the situation of the island, is
hardly to be equalled in any other part of the world. If we still more closely examine these
80 species, we shall be struck by the many peculiarities of structure they present, and by the
curious affinities with distant parts of the world which many of them seem to indicate.
