CHAPTER XXXIX. THE NATURAL
HISTORY OF THE PAPUAN ISLANDS.
NEW GUINEA, with the islands joined to it by a shallow sea, constitute the
Papuan group, characterised by a very close resemblance in their peculiar forms
of life. Having already, in my chapters on the Aru Islands and on the Birds of
Paradise, given some details of the natural history of this district, I shall here
confine myself to a general sketch of its animal productions, and of their
relations to those of the rest of the world.
New Guinea is perhaps the largest island on the globe, being a little larger
than Borneo. It is nearly fourteen hundred miles long, and in the widest part four
hundred broad, and seems to be everywhere covered with luxuriant forests.
Almost everything that is yet known of its natural productions comes from the
north-western peninsula, and a few islands grouped around it. These do not
constitute a tenth part of the area of the whole island, and are so cut off from it,
that their fauna may well he somewhat different; yet they have produced us
(with a very partial exploration) no less than two hundred and fifty species of
land birds, almost all unknown elsewhere, and comprising some of the most
curious and most beautiful of the feathered tribes. It is needless to say how much
interest attaches to the far larger unknown portion of this great island, the
greatest terra incognita that still remains for the naturalist to explore, and the
only region where altogether new and unimagined forms of life may perhaps be
found. There is now, I am happy to say, some chance that this great country will
no longer remain absolutely unknown to us. The Dutch Government have
granted well-equipped steamer to carry a naturalist (Mr. Rosenberg, already
mentioned in this work) and assistants to New Guinea, where they are to spend
some years in circumnavigating the island, ascending its large rivers a< far as
possible into the interior, and making extensive collections of its natural
productions.
The Mammalia of New Guinea and the adjacent islands, yet discovered, are
only seventeen in number. Two of these are bats, one is a pig of a peculiar
species (Sus papuensis), and the rest are all marsupials. The bats are, no doubt,
much more numerous, but there is every reason to believe that whatever new
land Mammalia man be discovered will belong to the marsupial order. One of