ranch into details that I fear will have been uninteresting to
the general reader, hut 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
seneral nature, since we now see the result, not of any
O 7
single or recent change only, hut of a whole series of
the later revolutions which have resulted in the present
distribution of land in the Eastern Hemisphere