nknown to the adjacent islands, but only
found again when we reach the Himalayan mountains or the Indian Peninsula.
Among birds we have a small yellow {463} flycatcher (_Myialestes
helianthea_), a flower-pecker (_Pachyglossa aureolimbata_), a finch (_Munia
brunneiceps_), and a roller (_Coracias temminckii_), all closely allied to
Indian (not Malayan) species,--all the genera, except Munia, being, in
fact, unknown in any Malay island. An exactly parallel case is that of a
butterfly of the genus Dichorrhagia, which has a very close ally in the
Himalayas, but nothing like it in any intervening country. These facts call
to mind the similar case of Formosa, where some of its birds and mammals
occurred again, under identical or closely allied forms, in the Himalayas;
and in both instances they can only be explained by going back to a period
when the distribution of these forms was very different from what it is
now.

_Peculiarities of Shape and Colour in Celebesian Butterflies._--Even more
remarkable are the peculiarities of shape and colour in a number of
Celebesian butterflies of different genera. These are found to vary all in
the same manner, indicating some general cause of variation able to act
upon totally distinct groups, and produce upon them all a common result.
Nearly thirty species of butterflies, belonging to three different
families, have a common modification in the shape of their wings, by which
they can be distinguished at a glance from their allies in any other island
or country whatever; and all these are larger than the representative forms
inhabiting most of the adjacent islands.[116] No such remarkable local
modification as this is known to occur in any other part of the globe; and
whatever may have been its cause, that cause must certainly have been long
in action, and have been confined to a limited area. We have here,
therefore, another argument in favour of the long-continued isolation of
Celebes from all the surrounding islands and continents--a hypothesis which
we have seen to afford the best, if not the only, explanation of its
peculiar vertebrate fauna.

_Concluding Remarks._--If the view here given of the origin of the
remarkable Celebesian fauna is correct, we have in this island a fragment
of the great eastern {464} continent which has preserved to us, perhaps
from Miocene times, some remnants of its ancient animal forms. There is no
other example on the globe of an island so closely surrounde