also in Ceram), Enodes,
and Scissirostrum, are very peculiar starlings, the latter altogether
unlike any other bird, and perhaps forming a distinct sub-family. Meropogon
is a peculiar bee-eater, allied to the Malayan Nyctiornis; Rhamphococyx is
a modification of Phaenicophaes, a Malayan genus of cuckoos; Prioniturus
(found also in the Philippines) is a genus of parrots distinguished by
raquet-formed tail feathers, altogether unique in the order; while
Megacephalon is a remarkable and very isolated form of the Australian
Megapodiidae, or mound-builders.

Omitting those whose affinity may be pretty clearly traced to groups still
inhabiting the islands of the western or the eastern half of the
Archipelago, we find four birds which have no near allies at all, but
appear to be either ancestral forms, or extreme modifications, of Asiatic
or {460} African birds--Basilornis, Enodes, Scissirostrum, Ceycopsis. These
may fairly be associated with the baboon-ape, anoa, and babirusa, as
indicating extreme antiquity and some communication with the Asiatic
continent at a period when the forms of life and their geographical
distribution differed considerably from what they are at the present time.

But here again we meet with exactly the same difficulty as in the mammalia,
in the comparative poverty of the types of birds now inhabiting Celebes.
Although the preponderance of affinity, especially in the case of its more
ancient and peculiar forms, is undoubtedly with Asia rather than with
Australia; yet, still more decidedly than in the case of the mammalia, are
we forbidden to suppose that it ever formed a part of the old Asiatic
continent, on account of the _total_ absence of so many important and
extensive groups of Asiatic birds. It is not single species or even genera,
but whole families that are thus absent, and among them families which are
pre-eminently characteristic of all tropical Asia. Such are the Timaliidae,
or babblers, of which there are twelve genera in Borneo, and nearly thirty
genera in the Oriental Region, but of which one species only, hardly
distinguishable from a Malayan form, inhabits Celebes; the Phyllornithidae,
or green bulbuls, and the Pycnonotidae, or bulbuls, both absolutely
ubiquitous in tropical Asia and Malaya, but unknown in Celebes; the
Eurylaemidae, or gapers, found everywhere in the great Malay Islands; the
Megalaemidae, or barbets; the Trogonidae, or trogons; and the Phasianidae,
or pheasants, all pr