s so closely resembling them that it requires a
practised ornithologist to tell the difference. If he is fond of insects he
notices many butterflies and a host of beetles which, though on close
examination they are found to be distinct from ours, are yet of the same
general aspect, and seem just what might be expected in any part of Europe.
There are also of course many birds and insects which are quite new and
peculiar, but these are by no means so numerous or conspicuous as to remove
the general impression of a wonderful resemblance between the productions
of such remote islands as Britain and Yesso.

Now let an inhabitant of Australia sail to New Zealand, a distance of less
than thirteen hundred miles, and he will find himself in a country whose
productions are totally unlike those of his own. Kangaroos and wombats
there are none, the birds are almost all entirely new, insects are very
scarce and quite unlike the handsome or strange Australian forms, while
even the vegetation is all changed, and no gum-tree, or wattle, or
grass-tree meets the traveller's eye.

But there are some more striking cases even than this, of the diversity of
the productions of countries not far apart. In the Malay Archipelago there
are two islands, named Bali and Lombok, each about as large as Corsica, and
separated by a strait only fifteen miles wide at its narrowest part. Yet
these islands differ far more from each other in their birds and quadrupeds
than do England and Japan. The birds of the one are extremely _unlike_
those of the other, the difference being such as to strike even the most
ordinary observer. Bali has red and green woodpeckers, barbets,
weaver-birds, and black-and-white magpie-robins, none of which are found in
Lombok, where, however, we find screaming cockatoos and friar-birds, and
the strange mound-building megapodes, which are all equally unknown in
Bali. Many of the kingfishers, crow-shrikes, and other birds, though of the
same general form, are of very distinct species; and though a considerable
number of birds are the same in both islands the difference {5} is none the
less remarkable--as proving that mere distance is one of the least
important of the causes which have determined the likeness or unlikeness in
the animals of different countries.

In the western hemisphere we find equally striking examples. The Eastern
United States possess very peculiar and interesting plants and animals, the
vegetation becoming mor