The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

X.] BALI AXD LOMBOOK. 115Rhinoceros' javanicus is the most striking example, for a distinctspecies is found in Borneo and Sumatra, wliile the Javanesespecies occurs in Burmah and even in Bengal. Among birds,the small ground dove, Geopelia striata, and the curious bronzecolouredmagpie, Crypsirhina varians, are common to Java andSiam ;while there are in Java species of Pteruthius, Arrenga,Myiophonus, Zoothera, Sturnopastor, and Estrelda, the nearestallies of which are found in various parts of India, while nothinglike them is known to inhabit Borneo or Sumatra.Such a curious plienomenon as this can only be imderstoodby supposing that, subsequent to the separation of Java, Borneobecame almost entirely submerged, and on its re-elevation wasfor a time connected ^vith tlie Malay peninsula and Sumatra,but not with Java or Siam. Any geologist who knows howstrata have been contorted and tilted up, and liow elevationsand depressions must often have occurred alternately, not onceor twice only, but scores and even hundreds of times, will haveno difficulty in admitting that such clianges as liave been hereindicated are not in themselves improbable. The existence ofextensive coal-beds in Borneo and Sumatra, of such recent originthat the leaves wliich abound in their shales are scarcely distinguishablefrom those of the forests whicli now cover tliecountry, proves that such changes of level actually did takeplace ;and it is a matter of much interest, both to the geologistand to the philosophic naturalist, to be able to form some conceptionof the order of those clianges, and to understand howthey may have resulted in the actual distribution of animal lifein these countries;—a distribution which often presents phenomenaso strange and contradictory, that without taking suclichanges into consideration we are unable even to imagine howthey could have been brought about.CHAPTER X.BALI AND LOMBOCK.(JUXE, JULY, 1856.)The islands of Bali and LomJbock, situated at the east end ofJava, are particularly interesting. They are tlie only islandsof the whole Archipelago in which the Hindoo religion stillmaintains itself—and they form the extreme points of the twogreat zoological divisions of the Eastern liemisphere ; foralthough so similar m externa] appearance and in all physicalfeatures, they differ greatly in their natural productions. Itwas after having spent two years in Borneo, Malacca andSingapore, that I made a somewhat involuntary visit to tlieseislands on my w^ay to Macassar. Had I been able to obtain aI 2