complete. I myself assiduously-collected birds in Celebes
for nearly ten months, and my assistant, Mr. Allen, spent
two months in the Sula islands. The Dutch naturalist
Forsten spent two years in Northern Celebes (twenty
years before my visit), and collections of birds had also
been sent to Holland from Macassar. The French ship
of discovery, L ’Astrolabe, also touched at Menado and
procured collections. Since my return home, the Dutch
naturalists Bosenberg and Bernstein have made extensive
collections both in North Celebes and in the Sula islands;
yet all their researches combined, have only added eight
species of land birds to those forming part of my own
collection—a fact which renders it almost certain that
there are very few more to discover.
Besides Salayer and Boutong on the south, with Peling
and Bungay on the east, the three islands of the Sula
(or Zula) Archipelago also belong zoologically to Celebes,
although their position is such, that it would seem more
natural to group them with the Moluccas. About 48 land
birds are now known from the Sula group, and if we reject
from these, five species which have a wide range over the
Archipelago, the remainder are much more characteristic
of Celebes than of the Moluccas. Thirty-one species are
identical with those of the former island, and four are
representatives of Celebes forms, while only eleven are
Molucean species, and two more representatives.
But although the Sula islands belong to Celebes, they are
so close to Bouru and the southern islands of the Oilolo
group, that several purely Moluccan forms have migrated
there, which are quite unknown to the island of Celebes
itself; the whole thirteen Moluccan species being in this
category, thus adding to the productions of Celebes a
foreign element which does not really belong to it. In
studying the peculiarities of the Celebesian fauna, it will
therefore be well to consider only the productions of the
main island.
The number of land birds in the island of Celebes is
128, and from these we may, as before, strike out a small
number of species which roam over the whole Archipelago
(often from India to the Pacific), and which therefore only
serve to disguise the peculiarities of individual islands.
These are 20 in number, and leave 108 species which
we may consider as more especially characteristic of the
island. On accurately comparing these with the birds of
all the surrounding countries, we find that only nine extend
into the islands westward, and nineteen into the islands
eastward, while no less than 80 are entirely confined to
the Celebesian fauna—a degree of individuality, which,
considering the situation of the island, is hardly to be
equalled in any other part, of the world. If we still more
closely examine these 80 species, we shall be struck by
the many peculiarities of structure they present, and by