The larger and more western islands of the Malay Archipelago have a fauna of beasts, birds, and reptiles, fish and insects, spiders and land crabs as remarkable as the wealth of their flora, and next to Africa the richest in the world. Here may still be seen—in Borneo—the wild Indian elephant and a two-horned rhinoceros; in Java there is a tiger and a small form of one-horned Indian rhinoceros. In Borneo exists the large red-haired ape called Orang-utan; in Java there are smaller anthropoid apes known as Gibbons. Java and Borneo both have a handsome wild ox, the Banteng, besides more or less wild long-horned Indian buffaloes. The smallest and most remarkable of all the buffaloes is the Anoa, found only on the island of Celebes, and a larger but similar short-horned buffalo is found in the Philippines. Nearly all the islands have wild swine—generally of a type near to the wild boar, but with a very long head—the parent form of the domestic pig of Polynesia. But the queer island of Celebes, and Buru, which lies to the east, possess the strangest pig in the world: the Babirusa, a type with—for pigs—a small and slender head and (in the male) tusks which grow up and out through the cheeks. In Borneo there is a large monkey with an immense drooping nose; in Celebes a creature called the Black Ape—an intermediate form between baboons, macaques, and the higher apes. The macaque monkeys—creatures with short tails and bare faces, rather like small baboons (the Gibraltar monkey is a macaque)—are very common throughout Malaysia, extending as near to New Guinea and Australia as the islands of Buru and Timor. The other monkeys belong to the Semnopithecus genus, the long-tailed sacred monkeys of India. One of these found in Borneo is a combination in colouring of black, white, and chestnut red. The more northern and western of the Malay Islands possess a few strange lemurs, a large flying creature, the colugo, allied to lemurs and bats, and the Tupaias or squirrel-tailed Insectivores. Deer, without any white spots and related to the Sambar type of India, are found in the Philippines, Borneo, Java, the eastern Sunda Islands as far as Timor, Celebes, and the Moluccas; and in the Philippines there are spotted deer like the hog deer of India. Carnivorous mammals are represented more especially by a small tiger and a leopard in Java, the Clouded tiger of Borneo (a kind of leopard), several small cats, numerous civets, a small bear, and wild dogs. Cats and civets extend their range to Timor and the Philippines, and a civet—probably brought by the Malays—is found in Celebes. The fruit-eating bats or flying foxes are very large, often attaining to 5 feet across the wings. Their range extends eastwards beyond the Solomon Islands to north-east Australia and the New Hebrides. Nearly all the Pacific islands, including New Zealand and Hawaii, have bats of their own, but they are insect-eating, and very often day-flying. In the eastern islands of Malaysia begin to appear the marsupials of Australia, but until New Guinea is reached there is only one type to be seen, the Cuscus—a kind of phalanger akin to the "Opossum" of Australia.[4] There are porcupines, squirrels, and many strange rodents of the Rat family in western Malaysia. Peculiar genera and species of rats penetrate not only to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, but also to Australia. The native rats of New Zealand and the Polynesian islands, however, have been introduced by man, chiefly for food.
The wealth in birds in Malaysia makes the naturalist's and artist's mouth water! There are no vultures, but several types of eagle—amongst them, in the Philippine Islands, a very large monkey-eating eagle with a huge, narrow beak—and some very handsomely coloured kites and hawks. Amongst the parrots are the gorgeous crimson Eclectus, the lovely Lories, and those "white parrots"—Cockatoos—which furnished so much amazement and delight to the early Italian voyagers. But the strangest looking of all the parrots are the black cockatoos, peculiar to New Guinea. The peacock reaches to Java but not to Borneo, but in Borneo and Palawan there are superb pheasants and peacock-pheasants, and most of the Malaysian islands possess wild jungle fowl. Peculiar to Malaysia and Australia are the Megapodes, a family of gallinaceous birds allied to the Curassows of America, and which hatch their eggs by depositing them in mounds of decaying vegetation. There are very large cuckoos, the size of big pheasants; but perhaps the most remarkable bird groups in their Malaysian developments are the Hornbills and the Pigeons. The Fruit Pigeons of this region transcend description in their exquisite tints of peach colour, green of several shades, crimson, purple, and maize yellow. One kind is jet-black and pale-cream colour. These fruit-eating pigeons extend their range into New Guinea, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. In New Guinea there is the celebrated Victoria Crowned Pigeon, largest living of all the tribe; and in the Samoa Islands, without any near relation, the Didunculus, or Little Dodo—a ground-frequenting bird (which has since taken to the trees) that shows us how the large Dodo of Mauritius developed from the ordinary fruit-pigeon type. The Kingfishers of Malaysia are also very wonderful, and reach their climax of development in the New Guinea region. Some species are remarkable for their long storklike beaks, their long racquet tails, and superb plumage of ultramarine blue, purple, and white.
But the crown of glory which rests on eastern Malaysia and New Guinea in regard to bird life has been bestowed on this region because of the presence here—and here only together with the north extremity of Australia—of the Paradise Birds. These marvels of creation, which are fast becoming exterminated by the agents of the wicked plumage trade, and without any opposition from the Dutch, German, or British Australian Governments of these countries, first make their appearance to a traveller coming from the west when he reaches the island of Jilolo or the Aru Islands, neither of which groups is very far from New Guinea. The Paradise Birds do not extend their range to the Bismarck Archipelago. East of the Solomon Islands there are fewer and fewer species of birds. Two Lories and three or four Parrakeets are found in Fiji, a beautiful blue and white lory inhabits Tahiti, together with a species of parrakeet. An ultramarine-blue and purple lory is found in the remote Marquezas archipelago, the farthest prolongation eastwards of the Malayan fauna. The other land birds of the Polynesian islands are pigeons, thrushes, flower-peckers, starlings, shrikes, babblers, a screech-owl, one or two plovers and rails, a sea-eagle, and two or three species of ducks. This seems to represent the totality of the resident birds of the Pacific islands east of Fiji and the New Hebrides. The birds of the Hawaii archipelago are very peculiar and have come thither chiefly from America. They include a peculiar family of starling-like birds—the Drepanidæ—celebrated for the beauty of their plumage which, in fact, has led to the extinction of several species.
The reptile life of Malaysia comprises many strange and remarkable forms, but, like the beasts, birds, and freshwater fish, it thins out in variety of species as the traveller crosses the boundary line between the Malay islands of Asiatic affinities and those belonging more to the Australian region; while, of course, in Polynesia reptiles are very few, or absent altogether. One or two species of harmless snakes are found as far eastwards as Fiji and Samoa. No land reptile of any kind exists in Tahiti or in Hawaii. Perhaps the biggest Crocodile in the world[5] (Crocodilus porosus) is found in all the great Malay Islands, and its range extends through New Guinea to the Solomon archipelago and Fiji, and to the extreme north coast of Australia. A much smaller—barely 7 feet long—crocodile with a long, narrow muzzle is found in northern and north-eastern Australia, and is quite harmless. Borneo has a peculiar gavial (fish-eating crocodile) with a very narrow snout. Large Pythons—perhaps the biggest known to science—extend over the same Austro-Malayan region, but do not reach lands to the east of New Guinea and Australia. Their place in the Melanesian islands of the Pacific is taken by small Boa snakes of a harmless nature. A prominent reptile in the life of the aborigines in Austro-Malaysia is the Monitor lizard, nearly always miscalled by Europeans "Iguana". This Monitor is the largest of the lizards, with a long, flexible tail, and sometimes as much as 8 feet in length in its Melanesian types, and is not infrequently mistaken for a crocodile by Europeans. It has very sharp teeth and can give a severe but not a very dangerous bite, its most powerful weapon being its whip-like tail. It is often eaten by the natives, and in its turn devours their fowls. Curiously enough, there is a real iguana in the Fiji Islands—one of the puzzles of animal distribution, for the Iguana family of vegetable-eating lizards is otherwise confined to Tropical America and Madagaskar. The seas of Malaysia and of Polynesia (as far south as the New Zealand coasts) swarm at times with different types of real sea-serpents, that is to say, snakes that live entirely in the water and resort only to the shore to give birth to their young, which are born alive. These sea-snakes are of the Cobra family and are very poisonous. They are sometimes brightly coloured and marked in bold patterns.
The MALAY ARCHIPELAGO
Scale, 1:22,500,00
Very different in climate, flora, and fauna to Malaysia and Polynesia are the great southern lands of Australia and New Zealand, together with New Caledonia and Norfolk Island. The northern, eastern, and south-western coast regions of Australia have a fairly abundant rainfall—quite as much as that which prevails in the more southerly of the Malay islands. But the centre, south, west, and north-west of Australia is much of it an almost hopeless desert, though not such a complete sandy desert as may be seen in Mongolia and northern Africa. The vegetation of this dry region of Australia consists mainly of a close-growing, spiny-seeded grass—the celebrated Spinifex. There are also gouty-looking Baobab trees like those of Tropical Africa. In New Guinea, where the rich flora contains not a few Australian elements, there are mountains rising considerably above the line of perpetual snow[6] both in the south-east and west, and many of the volcanoes, active and extinct, of Malaysia attain altitudes of over ten and eleven thousand feet. There are mountains nearly as lofty in the Solomon Islands, while in New Zealand we have the superb Southern Alps (12,349 feet at their highest), which give a magnificent display of snow peaks and glaciers. But much of Australia is flat and undulating, and the highest mountain in that continent is only 7328 feet. Another thing which marks off Australia from the rest of Australasia is the complete absence of active volcanoes. But this is only quite a recent fact in its history, for at periods scarcely more distant than fifty thousand or sixty thousand years ago there were still volcanoes in the eastern part of the island continent vomiting out boiling lava and red-hot ashes, even after the land was inhabited by man. Still, as compared with Malaysia, Polynesia, and northern New Zealand, Australia is a very stable region, not persecuted by earthquakes or the present results of volcanic activity.
Its flora, like its fauna, is so peculiar that it constitutes one of the most distinct and separate regions of the world. There are a few patches of forest in the far north-east which are almost Malayan in their richness, and which contain quite a number of Malay types; and in the extreme south-west the Araucaria pine forests attain a certain luxuriance of growth. The predominant tree throughout Australia is the Eucalyptus, a peculiar development of the Myrtle order (anciently inhabiting Europe), which extends into New Guinea but not into New Caledonia or New Zealand. The Eucalyptus genus in Australia develops something like one hundred and fifty species, some of these trees 200 feet high, like the splendid Jarra timber, others—the Mallee scrub—making low thickets of 12 to 14 feet above the ground. The Australian "pines", important in the timber trade, belong to the genus Frenela, (which is akin to the African Callitris), to the cypresses, the yews, junipers, and to the genus Araucaria, the "Monkey Puzzle" type of conifer. These Araucarias are also met with in Norfolk Island, New Caledonia, and on the mountains of New Guinea. They furnish the Norfolk Island pine, 200 feet high and 30 feet in girth; but the equally celebrated Kauri "pine" of New Zealand belongs to the quite different genus Agathis. The "She-oaks", "swamp-oaks", "beef-wood", "iron-wood" trees one reads about in the literature of Australia, are all species of Casuarina trees. (The Casuarinas form a separate sub-class of flowering plants. See note on p. 27.) There are no real oaks in Australia, but there is a kind of beech tree in the south. A type of tree most characteristic of Australia is the Acacia in various forms, but not looking at all like the Acacia of Africa and India with its pinnate leaves. The three hundred kinds of Australian acacias mostly develop a foliage which consists of long, undivided leaves. They are famous for the beauty and odour of their yellow blossoms, and under the incorrect name of "Mimosa" are now widely grown all over the world where the climate is sufficiently mild, just as the Eucalyptus globulus or Blue Gum tree of Australia has been spread by cultivation far and wide through Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. But Australia has comparatively few palms,[7] and those chiefly in the north-east, and no bread-fruit tree (except where introduced). Conspicuous objects in the landscape are the "Grass trees" (Xanthorrhœa and Kingia)—plants allied to lilies and rushes. The Grass tree has a great bunch of wiry-looking leaves at its base, out of which rises a straight smooth stem like a long walking-stick. This is surmounted by a spike of white flowers. The Doryanthis lily grows to a height of 15 feet from the ground. Another conspicuous object in the "bush" is the splendid Flame tree, with bunches of crimson flowers (Brachychiton, a genus of the Sterculiaceæ, distant relations of the Baobab and the Mallows). A common sight in the well-watered regions is the Australian "tulip" (nearly everything in Australia is mis-named)—the great red Waratah flower, really a kind of Protea. To this same order (Proteaceæ), which is so well represented in Australia and South Africa, belong the beautiful-foliaged Grevillea trees and the celebrated Banksia, a shrub named after Sir Joseph Banks, and found in Australia and New Guinea. In the marshes and creeks of Queensland there are superb water lilies with leaves 18 inches in diameter. The gouty Baobab trees of the desert have been already mentioned.
Beautiful scenery is only to be met with in Australia in the mountain ranges of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria, and in the vicinity of Perth (south-west Australia). Here there are glades with superb tree-ferns, but the mountain peaks above the tree zone are bare and desolate. A large proportion of the interior is a dismal flat of scrub and stones, its monotony only broken by 6- to 20-feet-high mounds of the Termites or white ants. A good deal of the north coast is obstructed by forests of mangroves—a dismal-looking tree with its dull-green, leathery foliage, grey-white stems and pendent air-roots.