The geographical distribution of animals, with a study of the relations ...

chap, xiii.] THE AUSTRALIAN REGION. 409Tasmania, both tropical and temperate, but for the most partarid, yet abounding in peculiar forms in all the classes of animals;then come the Polynesian Islands, another luxuriant region oftropical vegetation, yet excessively poor in most of the highergroups of animals as well as in some of the lower ; and lastly,we have New Zealand, a pair of temperate forest-clad islandsfar in the southern ocean, with a very limited yet strange andalmost wholly peculiar fauna. We have now to consider thegeneral features and internal relationsof the faunas of each ofthese sub-regions, together with any external relations whichhave not been discussed while treating the region asI. Austro-Malayan Sub-region.a whole.The central mass on which almost every part of this subregionis clearly dependent, is the great island of New Guinea,inhabited by the Papuan race of mankind ; and this, with thesurrounding islands, which are separated from it by shallow seasand possess its most marked zoological features, are termed Papua,A little further away lie the important groups of the Moluccason one side and the Eastern Papuan Islands on the other, whichpossess a fauna mainly derivative from New Guinea, yet wantingmany of its distinctive types ; and, in the case of the Moluccaspossessing many groups which are not Australian, but derivedfrom the adjacent Oriental region. To the south of these wehave the Timor group, whose fauna is clearly derivative, fromAustralia, from Java, and from the Moluccas. Lastly comesCelebes, whose fauna is most complex and puzzling, and, so faras we can judge, not fundamentally derivative from any of thesurrounding islands.Papua, or the Neiv &uinea Group.—New Guinea is verydeficient in Mammalia as compared with Australia, though thisapparent poverty may, in part, depend on our very scanty knowledge.As yet only four of the Australian families of Marsupialsare known to inhabit it, with nine genera, several of whichare peculiar. It also possesses a peculiar form of wild pig;but as yetno other non-marsupial terrestrial mammal has beendiscovered, except a rat, described by Dr. Gray as UromysVol. L—28