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

304 THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO. [chap.Obi, Ternate, and other small islands. These divisions haveeach a considerable number of peculiar species, no less thanfifty-five being found in the Cei'am group only ; and besidesthis, most of the separate islands have some species peculiar tothemselves. Thus Morty Island has a peculiar kingfisher,honey-sucker, and starling ; Ternate has a ground-thrush (Pitta)and a flycatcher ; Banda has a pigeon, a shrike, and a Pitta ;Ke has two flycatchers, a Zosterops, a shi'ike, a king-crow, anda cuckoo ; and tlie remote Timor-laut, which should probablycome into the Moluccan group, has a cockatoo and lory as itsonly known birds, and both are of peculiar species.^The Moluccas are especially rich in the parrot tribe, no legsthan twenty-two species, belonging to ten genera, inhabitingthem. Among these is the large red-crested cockatoo, so commonlyseen alive in Europe, two handsome red parrots of thegenus Eclectus, and five of the beautiful crimson lories, whichare almost exclusively confined to these islands and the NewGuinea group. The pigeons are hardly less abundant or beautiful,twenty-one species being known, including twelve of thebeautiful green fruit pigeons, the smaller kinds of which areornamented with the most brilliant patches of colour on thehead and the under-surface. Next to these come the kingfishers,including sixteen species, almost all of which are beautiful, andmany are among the most brilliantly-coloured birds that exist.One of the most curious groups of birds, the Megapodii, ormound-makers, is vei-y abundant in- the Moluccas. They aregallinaceous birds, about the size of a small fowl, and generallyof a dark ashy or sooty colour, and they have remarkably largeand strong feet and long claws. They are allied to the " Maleo "of Celebes, of which an account has already been given, butthey difier in habits, most of these birds frequenting the scrubbyjungles along the sea-shore, where the soil is sandy, and thereis a considerable quantity of debris^ consisting of sticks, shells,seaweed, leaves, &c. Of this rubbish the Megapodius formsimmense mounds, often six or eight feet high and twenty orthirty feet in diameter, which they are enabled to do with comparativeease by means of their large feet, with which they cangrasp and throw backwards a quantity of material. In thecentre of this mound, at a depth of two or three feet, the eggsare deposited, and are hatched by the gentle heat produced bythe fermentation of the vegetable matter of the mound. WhenI first saw these mounds in the island of Lombock, I couldhardly believe that they were made by such small birds, but I1 Mr. H. O. Forbes visited these islands in 1882, and obtained a fine collection ofbirds wliich now amount to eighty spefiies. Of these sixty-two arc land-birds, andtwenty-six of these are peculiar to the island. Tlieir affinities are chiefly with theMoluccas and New Guinea, but to some extent also witli Timor and Australia (SeeForbes' Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago, p. 35.';.) The butterfliescollected by Mr. Forbes show similar afflnitii-s, but fending more towards Timor andAustralia, due probablj' to the more immediate dependence of butterflies on vegetation.