The extraordinary habit of the male, in plastering up the
female with her egg, and feeding her during the whole
time of incubation, and till the young one is fledged, is
common to several of the large hornbills, and is one of
those strange facts in natural history which are “ stranger
than fiction.”
CHAPTER IX.
NATURAL HISTO RY OF TH E IND O-MA LA Y ISLA N D S .
TN the first chapter of this work I have stated generally
the reasons which lead us to conclude that the large
islands in the western portion of the Archipelago^-Java,
Sumatra, and Borneo—as well as the Malay peninsula and
the Philippine islands, have been recently separated from
the continent of Asia. I now propose to give a sketch of
the Natural History of these, which I term the Indo-Malay
islands, and to show how tar it supports this view, and
how much information it is able to give us of the antiquity
and origin of the separate islands.
The flora of the Archipelago is at present so imperfectly
known, and I have myself paid so little attention to it,
that I cannot draw from it many facts of importance. The
Malayan type of vegetation is however a very important
one ; and Dr. Hooker informs us, in his “ Flora Indica,”
that it spreads over all the moister and more equable parts
of India, and that many plants found in Ceylon, the Himalayas,
the Nilghiri, and Khasia mountains are identical with