My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY WORK 207forest regions are exceedingly abundant, and arevery destructive to eggs and young birds. I alsopoint out that there are here comparatively few othergroups of fruit-eating birds like the extensive familiesof chatterers, tanagers, and toucans of America, orthe barbets, bulbuls, finches, starlings, and many othergroups of India and Africa, while in all those countriesmonkeys, squirrels, and other arboreal mammals consumeenormous quantities of fruits. It is clear, therefore,that in the Australian region, especially in theforest-clad portions of it, both parrots and pigeonshave fewer enemies and fewer competitors for foodthan in other tropical regions, the result being thatthey have had freer scope for development in variousdirections leading to the production of forms andstyles of colouring unknown elsewhere. It is alsovery suggestive that the only other country in whichblack pigeons and black parrots are found is Madagascar,an island where also there are neither monkeysnor squirrels, and where arboreal carnivora or fruiteatingbirds are very scarce. The satisfactory solutionof these curious facts of distribution gave me verygreat pleasure, and I am not aware that the conclusionsI arrived at have been seriously objected to.Before I had written these two papers I hadbegun the study of my collection of butterflies, andin March, 1864, I read before the Linnean Societya rather elaborate paper on "The Malayan Papilionidae,as illustrating the Theory of Natural Selection,"I may state for the information of non-entomologicalreaders that the Papilionidae form one of themost extensive families of butterflies, and from theirlarge size, elegant forms, and splendid colours wereconsidered by all the older writers to be the princes