the curious Quadrumana forming the family of the Lemurs. These have their
metropolis in Madagascar, but are found also in Africa, in Ceylon, in the
peninsula of India, and in the Malay Archipelago as far as Celebes, which is its
furthest eastern limit. Dr. Sclater has proposed for the hypothetical continent
connecting these distant points, and whose former existence is indicated by the
Mascarene islands and the Maldive coral group, the name of Lemuria. Whether
or not we believe in its existence in the exact form here indicated, the student of
geographical distribution must see in the extraordinary and isolated productions
of Celebes, proof of the former existence of some continent from whence the
ancestors of these creatures, and of many other intermediate forms, could have
been derived.
In this short sketch of the most striking peculiarities of the Natural History of
Celebes, I have been obliged to enter much into details that I fear will have been
uninteresting to the general reader, but unless I had done so, my exposition
would have lost much of its force and value. It is by these details alone that I
have been able to prove the unusual features that Celebes presents to us. Situated
in the very midst of an Archipelago, and closely hemmed in on every side by
islands teeming with varied forms of life, its productions have yet a surprising
amount of individuality. While it is poor in the actual number of its species, it is
yet wonderfully rich in peculiar forms, many of which are singular or beautiful,
and are in some cases absolutely unique upon the globe. We behold here the
curious phenomenon of groups of insects changing their outline in a similar
manner when compared with those of surrounding islands, suggesting some
common cause which never seems to have acted elsewhere in exactly the same
way. Celebes, therefore, presents us with a most striking example of the interest
that attaches to the study of the geographical distribution of animals. We can see
that their present distribution upon the globe is the result of all the more recent
changes the earth's surface has undergone; and, by a careful study of the
phenomena, we are sometimes able to deduce approximately what those past
changes must have been in order to produce the distribution we find to exist. In
the comparatively simple case of the Timor group, we were able to deduce these
changes with some approach to certainty. In the much more complicated case of
Celebes, we can only indicate their general nature, since we now see the result,
not of any single or recent change only, but of a whole series of the later
revolutions which have resulted in the present distribution of land in the Eastern
Hemisphere.