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

chap, xiii.] THE AUSTRALIAN REGION. 413preeminently Australian in character and possesses many peculiardevelopments of Australian types, it has also—as might be expectedfrom its geographical position, its climate, and its vegetation—receivedan infusion of Malayan forms. But while onegroup of these isspread over the whole Archipelago, and occasionallybeyond it, there is another group which presents theunusual and interesting feature of discontinuous distribution,jumping over a thousand miles of island-studded sea from Javaand Borneo to New Guinea itself. It is a parallel case to thatof Java in the Oriental region, which we have already discussed,but the suggested explanation in that case is more difficult toapply here. The recent soundings by the Challenger show us,that although the several islands of the Moluccas are surroundedby water from 1,200 to 2,800 fathoms deep, yet these seas forminclosed basins with rims not more than from 400 to 900fathoms deep, suggesting the idea of great lakes or inland seaswhich have sunk down bodily with the surrounding land, or thatenormous local and restricted elevations and subsidences havehere occurred. We have also the numerous small islands and coralbanks south of Celebes and eastward towards Timor-Laut and theAru Islands, indicating great subsidence ; and it is possible thatthere was an extension of Papua tothe west, approaching sufficientlynear to Java to receive occasional straggling birds of Indo-Malay type, altogether independent of the Moluccas to the north.Bright Colours and Ornamental Plumage of New Guinea Birds.—One of the most striking features of Papuan ornithology is thelarge proportion which the handsome and bright-coloured birdsbear to the more obscure species. That this is really the casehas been ascertained by going over my own collections, made atAru and New Guinea, and comparing them with my collectionmade at Malacca—a district remarkable for the number of handsomebirds it produces. Using, as nearly as possible, the samestandard of beauty, about one-third of the Malacca birds may beclassed as handsome, 1 while in Papua the proportion comes outexactly one-half.This is due, in part to the great abundance of1 I also find about this proportion in my Amazonian collections, evencounting all the humming-birds, parrots, and toucans as handsome birds.