species identical with those now abounding in the great Malay islands, or in
Celebes.
The four remaining mammals are Marsupials, an order of the class Mammalia,
which is very characteristic of the Australian fauna; and these are probably true
natives of the Moluccas, since they are either of peculiar species, or if found
elsewhere are natives only of New Guinea or North Australia. The first is the
small flying opossum, Belideus ariel, a beautiful little animal, exactly line a
small flying squirrel in appearance, but belonging to the marsupial order. The
other three are species of the curious genus Cuscus, which is peculiar to the
Austro-Malayan region. These are opossum-like animals, with a long prehensile
tail, of which the terminal half is generally bare. They have small heads, large
eyes, and a dense covering of woolly fur, which is often pure white with
irregular black spots or blotches, or sometimes ashy brown with or without white
spots. They live in trees, feeding upon the leaves, of which they devour large
quantities, they move about slowly, and are difficult to kill, owing to the
thickness of their fur, and their tenacity of life. A heavy charge of shot will often
lodge in the slain and do them no harm, and even breaking the spine or piercing
the brain will not kill them for some hours. The natives everywhere eat their
flesh, and as their motions are so slow, easily catch them by climbing; so that it
is wonderful they have not been exterminated. It may be, however, that their
dense woolly fur protects them from birds of prey, and the islands they live in
are too thinly inhabited for man to be able to exterminate them. The figure
represents Cuscus ornatus, a new species discovered by me in Batchian, and
which also inhabits Ternate. It is peculiar to the Moluccas, while the two other
species which inhabit Ceram are found also in New Guinea and Waigiou.
In place of the excessive poverty of mammals which characterises the
Moluccas, we have a very rich display of the feathered tribes. The number of
species of birds at present known from the various islands of the Molluccan
group is 265, but of these only 70 belong to the usually abundant tribes of the
waders and swimmers, indicating that these are very imperfectly known. As they
are also pre-eminently wanderers, and are thus little fitted for illustrating the
geographical distribution of life in a limited area, we will here leave them out of
consideration and confine our attention only to the 195 land birds.
When we consider that all Europe, with its varied climate and vegetation, with
every mile of its surface explored, and with the immense extent of temperate
Asia and Africa, which serve as storehouses, from which it is continually
recruited, only supports 251 species of land birds as residents or regular
immigrants, we must look upon the numbers already procured in the small and