Linnean Society of London

“ On exactly the same principles, the very large number of species of plants, insects, and birds, in Europe and North America, either absolutely identical or represented by very closely allied species, most assuredly indicates that some means of land communication in temperate or sub-arctic latitudes existed at no very distant geological epoch; and though many naturalists are inclined to regard all such views as vague and unprofitable speculations, we are convinced they will soon take their place among the legitimate deductions of science. ”

“ All recent Crocodilia have both scales and scutes in the dorsal region of the body, the scutes underlying, and having the same general form as the scales. In all, the ventral region of the body is also covered with scales which have a very definite shape; but in no recent Crocodilian which I have examined, save those species which are included in the genera Caiman and Jacare, are there any scutes in the ventral region. ”

“ The relations of the animals and of the plants 184 of these countries must necessarily depend on the same physical changes which the Southern hemisphere has undergone; and we are therefore led to conclude that insects are much less persistent in their specific forms than flowering plants, while among Mammalia and land birds (in which no genus even is common to the countries in question) species must die and be replaced much more rapidly than in either. ”

“ We have only therefore to suppose that the species of the western passed over to the eastern islands at so remote a period as on one side or the other to have become extinct, and to have been replaced by an allied form, and we shall have produced exactly the state of things now existing. Such extinction and such replacement we know has been continually going on. ”

“ Leaving the Philippines out of the question for the present, the western and eastern islands of the Archipelago, as here divided, belong to regions more distinct and contrasted than any other of the great zoological divisions of the globe. South America and Africa, separated by the Atlantic, do not differ so widely as Asia and Australia; Asia with its abundance and variety of large Mammals and no Marsupials, and Australia with scarcely anything but Marsupials ”

“ It is bent upon itself with an angle open forwards, and is divided into two halves (each of which contains seven scutes) by the union of the middle scutes of the fifteenth subcervical with those of the first row of what may be termed the subdorsal scutes, or those which lie under the thorax and abdomen. Of subdorsal and subcaudal scutes there are, up to the broken-off end of the tail, thirty-seven rows, with the following numbers of scutes:—
It will be noticed that there are three more rows of ventral than of dorsal scutes. ”

“ In our second class (representative species) we must place the Wild Pigs, which seem to be of distinct but closely allied species in each island; the Squirrels also of Celebes are of peculiar species, as are the Woodpeckers and Hornbills, and two Celebes birds of the Asiatic genera Phænicophæus and Acridotheres. Now these and a few more of like character are closely allied to other species inhabiting Java, Borneo, or the Philippines. ”

“ In the only examples of the exuviation of macrourous Decapod Crustaceans, there exists a singular diversity in the process itself. In Astacus, as described by Réaumur, the process commences with the escape of the cephalothorax; in Homarus, as I have now described it, it begins by the emergence of the abdomen. In Astacus the carapace is detached and thrown off bodily and unbroken, being severed from its attachments with the lateral portions of the cephalothorax, as is the case in the Brachyura ”

“ Crocodilus Journei
is another unmistakeably distinct and very remarkable species. The descriptions and figures given by Graves, Bory de St. Vincent, and Duméril and Bibron, of the unique specimen of this Crocodile to the Bordeaux Museum, would alone have compelled me to differ entirely from the view taken by Dr. Gray of the affinities of this species. ”

“ Deep golden green, thickly beset with very stout bristles; head silvery white; vertex green on each side; frontalia piceous, very broad, with long stout bristles on each side; facialia without bristles; face black, deeply keeled, the keel partly white; epistoma slightly prominent; eyes bare; palpi long, subclavate; antennæ almost reaching the epistoma, 3rd joint full four times the length of the 2nd; pectus with a silvery spot on each side; abdomen elongate-oval, a little longer than the thorax, with long stout spines hindward, purple at the tip, where there is a silvery spot on each side ”

“ Of all the varied forms of Quadrumana, Carnivora, Insectivora and Ruminantia which abound in the western half of the Archipelago, the only genera found in the Moluccas are Paradoxurus and Cervus. The Sciuridæ, so numerous in the western islands, are represented in Celebes by only two or three species, while not one is found further east. Birds furnish equally remarkable illustrations. The Australian region is the richest in the world in Parrots; the Asiatic is (of tropical regions) the poorest. ”

“ The attempt to discover the limits within which this remarkable exoskeleton is to be found, led me to look, more critically than I had previously done, into the arrangement and specific characterization of the recent Crocodilia. ”

“ The cartilages of Sepia have a true resemblance to those of a Skate, and the Cirrhipede truly connects the Mollusk with the Crustacean. The author regards Dentalium as a gasteropod, differing in this respect from Lacaze-Duthiers, whose beautiful paper, however, renders it supererogatory to say anything more on this animal, except that the author believes that the presence of the spiniferous tongue, of a proboscis, and the nature of the food, are favourable to his view: he also takes the feathery tufts to be the branchiæ. ”

“ For simplicity attracts the student, whom a more complex (even if more natural) method would repel; and for the collection of an adequate mass of materials wherewith, eventually, to build up a more symmetrical and widely-based structure, a multitude of comparatively unskilled labourers is more efficacious than a small knot of the most erudite architects. ”

“ The Australian and Indian regions of Zoology are very strongly contrasted. In one the Marsupial order constitutes the great mass of the mammalia,—in the other not a solitary marsupial animal exists. Marsupials of at least two genera (Cuscus and Belideus) are found all over the Moluccas and in Celebes; but none have 173 been detected in the adjacent islands of Java and Borneo. ”

“ The webs of the feet are small. The dorsal scutes are articulated together, as in the preceding genus; and there are similarly-articulated ventral scutes. There are 18-20 teeth on each side, above and below; and the fourth tooth in the upper jaw is the largest. The mandibular symphysis extends back nearly to the fifth tooth.
In a skull of Jacare (fissipes?) , 19 inches long, in the British Museum, I find that part of the vomer which is visible in the palate to be a rhomboidal plate, somewhat truncated anteriorly, and rather more than 11/2 inch long and 1 inch wide. ”

“ Purpurea, pubescens capite nigro, facie subobliqua, palpis antennis pedibusque nigris, abdomine lato crasso, alis fuscescenti-cinereis basi nigricantibus, alulis obscurioribus. Var. β. Viridescenti-cyanea, scutello purpureo.
Female. Brilliant purple; head black, shining, narrower than the thorax; frontalia dull, linear; face slightly oblique; palpi and antennæ black, the latter not reaching the epistoma; thorax and abdomen with thick black pubescence; abdomen very thick, shorter and much broader than the thorax; legs black; wings brownish grey, blackish at the base; veins black ”

“ If these islands have existed in their present form only during one of the later divisions of the Tertiary period, and if interchange of species at very rare and distant intervals has occurred, then the fact of some identical and other closely allied species is a necessary result, even if the two regions in question had been originally peopled by absolutely distinct creations of organic beings, and there had never been any closer connexion between them than now exists. ”

“ Darwin has deduced from the structure of coral reefs, by the surveys of the ocean-bed now in progress, and by a more extensive and detailed knowledge of the geographical distribution of animals and plants, the naturalist may soon hope to obtain some idea of the continents which have now disappeared beneath the ocean, and of the general distribution of land and sea at former geological epochs. ”

“ Among the osteological characters which have been detailed, the peculiarities of the tergal armour, the proportions of the skull, combined with the characters of the ridges upon its surface, and the form of the premaxillo-maxillary suture amply suffice to diagnose this species. Even in the small skull, only 51/2 inches long, lent to me by Dr. Gray, the characteristic features of the species are well exhibited, although age appears to give rise to many differences. ”

“ Deer have reached Celebes, Timor, Buru, Ceram, and Gilolo, but not New Guinea; Pigs have extended to New Guinea, probably the true eastern limit of the genus Sus; Squirrels are found in Celebes, Lombock, and Sumbawa: among birds, Gallus occurs in Celebes and Sumbawa, Woodpeckers reach Celebes, and Hornbills extend to the North-west of New Guinea. These cases of identity or resemblance in the animals of the two regions we may group into three classes; 1st, identical species; 2nd, closely allied or representative species; and 3rd, species of peculiar and isolated genera. ”

“ The following suppressed description of an unnamed Ark that was allied to, if it were not, fusca or barbata, was found in the manuscript. The 'Museum' had been referred to in the synonymy of the latter in the 'Systema,' but the species was not mentioned in the published version.
Arca ovalis, compressiuscula, apicibus subcontiguis.
Testa rudis, ferrugineo-fusca, longitudinaliter striata, striis quasi ex punctis callosis concatenatis, alternis striis majoribus ovatis, parum obliqua, minus lateribus gibba, rotunda absque angulis. Margo æqualis, edentulus. Apices recurvi fere tangunt se invicem. ”

“ The Philippine Islands are in some respects of doubtful location, resembling and differing from both regions. They are deficient in the varied Mammals of Borneo, but they contain no Marsupials. The Psittaci are scarce, as in the Indian region; the Lories are altogether absent, but there is one representative of the Cockatoos. Woodpeckers, Trogons, and the genera Ixos, Copsychus, and Ploceus are highly characteristic of India. Tanysiptera and Megapodius, again, are Australian forms, but these seem represented by only solitary species. The islands possess also a few peculiar genera. ”

“ The distance too is less than between any of the other large islands; there are no violent currents to neutralize the action of the winds; and numerous islets in mid-channel offer stations which might rescue many of the wanderers, and admit, after repose, of fresh migrations. Between Java and Borneo the width of sea is much greater, the intermediate islands are fewer, and the direction of the monsoons along and not across the Java sea, accompanied by alternating currents in the same direction, must render accidental communication between the two islands exceedingly difficult ”

“ As I have endeavoured to show, however, C. Journei is a true crocodile; and, as I shall point out below, Müller and Schlegel have satisfactorily proved C. Schlegelii to be a Gavial. Consequently Mecistops is at present represented by only one species, which must be called M. cataphractus if M. Bennettii of Gray is really the adult of the form which Cuvier described.
III. In the family of the Gavialidæ, the snout is always very long and slender; the teeth are for the most part slender, sharp-edged, and subequal. ”

“ In the shell of a Patella, Emarginula, or Haliotis, we have the two conjoined valves of a lamellibranchiate mollusk; and through such forms as Calyptræa, Hipponyx, Navicella, and Nerita, we arrive at the ordinary form of the gasteropod with its operculum.
Then follows a disquisition on the progressive tendency to a spiral geometry in these animals, due to a varying plan of conformation, and not to the force of the heart, there being generally an atrophy of the left side of the body. ”