Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Australia and New Guinea as the Western Islands do to Asia. It is well known that the natur-
al productions of Australia differ from those of Asia more than those of any of the four an-
cient quarters of the world differ from each other. Australia, in fact, stands alone: it pos-
sesses no apes or monkeys, no cats or tigers, wolves, bears, or hyenas; no deer or antelopes,
sheep or oxen; no elephant, horse, squirrel, or rabbit; none, in short, of those familiar types
of quadruped which are met with in every other part of the world. Instead of these, it has
Marsupials only, kangaroos and opossums, wombats and the duck-billed Platypus. In birds it
is almost as peculiar. It has no woodpeckers and no pheasants, families which exist in every
other part of the world; but instead of them it has the mound-making brush-turkeys, the hon-
eysuckers, the cockatoos, and the brush-tongued lories, which are found nowhere else upon
the globe. All these striking peculiarities are found also in those islands which form the
Austro-Malayan division of the Archipelago.
The great contrast between the two divisions of the Archipelago is nowhere so abruptly
exhibited as on passing from the island of Bali to that of Lombock, where the two regions
are in closest proximity. In Bali we have barbets, fruit-thrushes, and woodpeckers; on
passing over to Lombock these are seen no more, but we have abundance of cockatoos, hon-
west. The strait is here fifteen miles wide, so that we may pass in two hours from one great
division of the earth to another, differing as essentially in their animal life as Europe does
from America. If we travel from Java or Borneo to Celebes or the Moluccas, the difference
is still more striking. In the first, the forests abound in monkeys of many kinds, wild cats,
deer, civets, and otters, and numerous varieties of squirrels are constantly met with. In the
latter none of these occur; but the prehensile-tailed Cuscus is almost the only terrestrial
mammal seen, except wild pigs, which are found in all the islands, and deer (which have
probably been recently introduced) in Celebes and the Moluccas. The birds which are most
abundant in the Western Islands are woodpeckers, barbets, trogons, fruit-thrushes, and leaf-
thrushes: they are seen daily, and form the great ornithological features of the country. In the
Eastern Islands these are absolutely unknown, honeysuckers and small lories being the most
common birds; so that the naturalist feels himself in a new world, and can hardly realize that
he has passed from the one region to the other in a few days, without ever being out of sight
of land.
The inference that we must draw from these facts is undoubtedly, that the whole of the is-
lands eastwards beyond Java and Borneo do essentially form a part of a former Australian or
Pacific continent, although some of them may never have been actually joined to it. This
continent must have been broken up not only before the Western Islands were separated
