The Malay Archipelago, Volume 2

One day my boy Ali came home with a story of a big snake. He was walking through some high grass, and stepped on something which he took for a small fallen tree, but it felt cold and yielding to his feet, and far to the right and left there was a waving and rustling of the herbage. He jumped back in affright and prepared to shoot, but could not get a good vies of the creature, and it passed away, he said, like a tree being dragged along through the grass. As he lead several times already shot large snakes, which he declared were all as nothing compared with this, I am inclined to believe it must really have been a monster. Such creatures are rather plentiful here, for a man living close by showed me on his thigh the marks where he had been seized by one close to his house. It was big enough to take the man's thigh in its mouth, and he would probably have been killed and devoured by it had not his cries brought out his neighbours, who destroyed it with their choppers. As far as I could make out it was about twenty feet long, but Ali's was probably much larger.

It sometimes amuses me to observe how, a few days after I have taken possession of it, a native hut seems quite a comfortable home. My house at Waypoti was a bare shed, with a large bamboo platform at one side. At one end of this platform, which was elevated about three feet, I fixed up my mosquito curtain, and partly enclosed it with a large Scotch plaid, making a comfortable little sleeping apartment. I put up a rude table on legs buried in the earthen floor, and had my comfortable rattan-chair for a seat. A line across one corner carried my daily-washed cotton clothing, and on a bamboo shelf was arranged my small stock of crockery and hardware: Boxes were ranged against the thatch walls, and hanging shelves, to preserve my collections from ants while drying, were suspended both without and within the house. On my table lay books, penknives, scissors, pliers, and pins, with insect and bird labels, all of which were unsolved mysteries to the native mind.

Most of the people here had never seen a pin, and the better informed took a pride in teaching their more ignorant companions the peculiarities and uses of that strange European production—a needle with a head, but no eye! Even paper, which we throw away hourly as rubbish, was to them a curiosity; and I often saw them picking up little scraps which had been swept out of the house, and carefully putting them away in their betel-pouch. Then when I took my morning coffee and evening tea, how many were the strange things displayed to them! Teapot, teacups, teaspoons, were all more or less curious in their eyes; tea, sugar, biscuit, and butter, were articles of human consumption seen by many of them for the first time. One asks if that whitish powder is "gula passir" (sand-sugar), so called to distinguish it from the coarse lump palm-sugar or molasses of native manufacture; and the biscuit is considered a sort of European sago-cake, which the inhabitants of those remote regions are obliged to use in the absence of the genuine article. My pursuit, were of course utterly beyond their comprehension. They continually asked me what white people did with the birds and insects I tools so much care to preserve. If I only kept what was beautiful, they might perhaps comprehend it; but to see ants and files and small ugly insects put away so carefully was a great puzzle to them, and they were convinced that there must be some medical or magical use for them which I kept a profound secret. These people were in fact as completely unacquainted with civilized life as the Indians of the Rocky Mountains, or the savages of Central Africa—yet a steamship, that highest triumph of human ingenuity, with its little floating epitome of European civilization, touches monthly at Cajeli, twenty miles off; while at Amboyna, only sixty miles distant, a European population and government have been established for more than three hundred years.

Having seen a good many of the natives of Bouru from different villages, and from distant parts of the island, I feel convinced that they consist of two distinct races now partially amalgamated. The larger portion are Malays of the Celebes type, often exactly similar to the Tomóre people of East Celebes, whom I found settled in Batchian; while others altogether resemble the Alfuros of Ceram.

The influx of two races can easily be accounted for. The Sula Islands, which are closely connected with East Celebes, approach to within forty miles of the north coast of Bouru, while the island of Manipa offers an easy point of departure for the people of Ceram. I was confirmed in this view by finding that the languages of Bouru possessed distinct resemblances to that of Sula, as well as to those of Ceram.

Soon after we had arrived at Waypoti, Ali had seen a beautiful little bird of the genus Pitta, which I was very anxious to obtain, as in almost every island the species are different, and none were yet known from Bourn. He and my other hunter continued to see it two or three times a week, and to hear its peculiar note much oftener, but could never get a specimen, owing to its always frequenting the most dense thorny thickets, where only hasty glimpses of it could be obtained, and at so short a distance that it would be difficult to avoid blowing the bird to pieces. Ali was very much annoyed that he could not get a specimen of this bird, in going after which he had already severely, wounded his feet with thorns; and when we had only two days more to stay, he went of his own accord one evening to sleep at a little but in the forest some miles off, in order to have a last try for it at daybreak, when many birds come out to feed, and are very intent on their morning meal. The next evening he brought me home two specimens, one with the head blown completely off, and otherwise too much injured to preserve, the other in very good order, and which I at once saw to be a new species, very like the Pitta celebensis, but ornamented with a square patch of bright red on the nape of the neck.

The next day after securing this prize we returned to Cajeli, and packing up my collections left Bouru by the steamer. During our two days' stay at Ternate, I took on board what baggage I had left there, and bade adieu to all my friends. We then crossed over to Menado, on our way to Macassar and Java, and I finally quitted the Moluccas, among whose luxuriant and beautiful islands I had wandered for more than three years.

My collections in Bouru, though not extensive, were of considerable interest; for out of sixty-six species of birds which I collected there, no less than seventeen were new, or had not been previously found in any island of the Moluccas. Among these were two kingfishers, Tanysiptera acis and Ceyx Cajeli; a beautiful sunbird, Nectarines proserpina; a handsome little black and white flycatcher, Monarcha loricata, whose swelling throat was beautifully scaled with metallic blue; and several of less interest. I also obtained a skull of the babirusa, one specimen of which was killed by native hunters during my residence at Cajeli.

CHAPTER XXVII. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MOLUCCAS

THE Moluccas consist of three large islands, Gilolo, Ceram, and Bouru, the two former being each about two hundred miles long; and a great number of smaller isles and islets, the most important of which are Batchian, Morty, Obi, Ke, Timor-Laut, and Amboyna; and among the smaller ones, Ternate, Tidore, Kaióa, and Banda. They occupy a space of ten degrees of latitude by eight of longitude, and they are connected by groups of small islets to New Guinea on the east, the Philippines on the north, Celebes on the west, and Timor on the south. It will be as well to bear in mind these main features of extent and geographical position, while we survey their animal productions and discuss their relations to the countries which surround them on every side in almost equal proximity.

We will first consider the Mammalia or warm-blooded quadrupeds, which present us with some singular anomalies. The land mammals are exceedingly few in number, only ten being yet known from the entire group. The bats or aerial mammals, on the other hand, are numerous—not less than twenty-five species being already known. But even this exceeding poverty of terrestrial mammals does not at all represent the real poverty of the Moluccas in this class of animals; for, as we shall soon see, there is good reason to believe that several of the species have been introduced by man, either purposely or by accident.

The only quadrumanous animal in the group is the curious baboon-monkey, Cynopithecus nigrescens, already described as being one of the characteristic animals of Celebes. This is found only in the island of Batchian; and it seems so much out of place there as it is difficult to imagine how it could have reached the island by any natural means of dispersal, and yet not have passed by the same means over the narrow strait to Gilolo—that it seems more likely to have originated from some individuals which had escaped from confinement, these and similar animals being often kept as pets by the Malays, and carried about in their praus.

Of all the carnivorous animals of the Archipelago the only one found in the Moluccas is the Viverra tangalunga, which inhabits both Batchian and Bouru, and probably come of the other islands. I am inclined to think that this also may have been introduced accidentally, for it is often made captive by the Malays, who procure civet from it, and it is an animal very restless and untameable, and therefore likely to escape. This view is rendered still more probable by what Antonio de Morga tells us was the custom in the Philippines in 1602. He says that "the natives of Mindanao carry about civet-cats in cages, and sell them in the islands; and they take the civet from them, and let them go again." The same species is common in the Philippines and in all the large islands of the Indo-Malay region.

The only Moluccan ruminant is a deer, which was once supposed to be a distinct species, but is now generally considered to be a slight variety of the Rusa hippelaphus of Java. Deer are often tamed and petted, and their flesh is so much esteemed by all Malays, that it is very natural they should endeavour to introduce them into the remote islands in which they settled, and whose luxuriant forests seem so well adapted for their subsistence.

The strange babirusa of Celebes is also found in Bouru; but in no other Moluccan island, and it is somewhat difficult to imagine how it got there. It is true that there is some approximation between the birds of the Sula Islands (where the babirusa is also found) and those of Bouru, which seems to indicate that these islands have recently been closer together, or that some intervening land has disappeared. At this time the babirusa may have entered Bouru, since it probably swims as well as its allies the pigs. These are spread all over the Archipelago, even to several of the smaller islands, and in many cases the species are peculiar. It is evident, therefore, that they have some natural means of dispersal. There is a popular idea that pigs cannot swim, but Sir Charles Lyell has shown that this is a mistake. In his "Principles of Geology" (10th Edit. vol. ii p. 355) he adduces evidence to show that pigs have swum many miles at sea, and are able to swim with great ease and swiftness. I have myself seen a wild pig swimming across the arm of the sea that separates Singapore from the Peninsula of Malacca, and we thus have explained the curious fact, that of all the large mammals of the Indian region, pigs alone extend beyond the Moluccas and as far as New Guinea, although it is somewhat curious that they have not found their way to Australia.

The little shrew, Sorex myosurus, which is common in Sumatra, Borneo, and Java, is also found in the larger islands of the Moluccas, to which it may have been accidentally conveyed in native praus.

This completes the list of the placental mammals which are so characteristic of the Indian region; and we see that, with the single exception of the pig, all may very probably have been introduced by man, since all except the pig are of species identical with those now abounding in the great Malay islands, or in Celebes.

The four remaining mammals are Marsupials, an order of the class Mammalia, which is very characteristic of the Australian fauna; and these are probably true natives of the Moluccas, since they are either of peculiar species, or if found elsewhere are natives only of New Guinea or North Australia. The first is the small flying opossum, Belideus ariel, a beautiful little animal, exactly line a small flying squirrel in appearance, but belonging to the marsupial order. The other three are species of the curious genus Cuscus, which is peculiar to the Austro-Malayan region. These are opossum-like animals, with a long prehensile tail, of which the terminal half is generally bare. They have small heads, large eyes, and a dense covering of woolly fur, which is often pure white with irregular black spots or blotches, or sometimes ashy brown with or without white spots. They live in trees, feeding upon the leaves, of which they devour large quantities, they move about slowly, and are difficult to kill, owing to the thickness of their fur, and their tenacity of life. A heavy charge of shot will often lodge in the slain and do them no harm, and even breaking the spine or piercing the brain will not kill them for some hours. The natives everywhere eat their flesh, and as their motions are so slow, easily catch them by climbing; so that it is wonderful they have not been exterminated. It may be, however, that their dense woolly fur protects them from birds of prey, and the islands they live in are too thinly inhabited for man to be able to exterminate them. The figure represents Cuscus ornatus, a new species discovered by me in Batchian, and which also inhabits Ternate. It is peculiar to the Moluccas, while the two other species which inhabit Ceram are found also in New Guinea and Waigiou.

In place of the excessive poverty of mammals which characterises the Moluccas, we have a very rich display of the feathered tribes. The number of species of birds at present known from the various islands of the Molluccan group is 265, but of these only 70 belong to the usually abundant tribes of the waders and swimmers, indicating that these are very imperfectly known. As they are also pre-eminently wanderers, and are thus little fitted for illustrating the geographical distribution of life in a limited area, we will here leave them out of consideration and confine our attention only to the 195 land birds.

When we consider that all Europe, with its varied climate and vegetation, with every mile of its surface explored, and with the immense extent of temperate Asia and Africa, which serve as storehouses, from which it is continually recruited, only supports 251 species of land birds as residents or regular immigrants, we must look upon the numbers already procured in the small and comparatively unknown islands of the Moluccas as indicating a fauna of fully average richness in this department. But when we come to examine the family groups which go to make up this number, we find the most curious deficiencies in some, balanced by equally striking redundancy in other. Thus if we compare the birds of the Moluccas with those of India, as given in Mr. Jerdon's work, we find that the three groups of the parrots, kingfishers, and pigeons, form nearly one-third of the whole land-birds in the former, while they amount to only one-twentieth in the latter country. On the other hand, such wide-spread groups as the thrushes, warblers, and finches, which in India form nearly one-third of all the land-birds, dwindle down in the Moluccas to one-fourteenth.

The reason of these peculiarities appears to be, that the Moluccan fauna has been almost entirely derived from that of New Guinea, in which country the same deficiency and the same luxuriance is to be observed. Out of the seventy-eight genera in which the Moluccan land-birds may be classed, no less than seventy are characteristic of Yew Guinea, while only six belong specially to the Indo-Malay islands. But this close resemblance to New Guinea genera does not extend to the species, for no less than 140 out of the 195 land-birds are peculiar to the Moluccan islands, while 32 are found also in New Guinea, and 15 in the Indo-Malay islands. These facts teach us, that though the birds of this group have evidently been derived mainly from New Guinea, yet the immigration has not been a recent one, since there has been time for the greater portion of the species to have become changed. We find, also, that many very characteristic New Guinea forms lave not entered the Moluccas at all, while others found in Ceram and Gilolo do not extend so far west as Bouru. Considering, further, the absence of most of the New Guinea mammals from the Moluccas, we are led to the conclusion that these islands are not fragments which have been separated from New Guinea, but form a distinct insular region, which has been upheaved independently at a rather remote epoch, and during all the mutations it has undergone has been constantly receiving immigrants from that great and productive island. The considerable length of time the Moluccas have remained isolated is further indicated by the occurrence of two peculiar genera of birds, Semioptera and Lycocorax, which are found nowhere else.

We are able to divide this small archipelago into two well marked groups—that of Ceram, including also Bouru. Amboyna, Banda, and Ke; and that of Gilolo, including Morty, Batchian, Obi, Ternate, and other small islands. These divisions have each a considerable number of peculiar species, no less than fifty-five being found in the Ceram group only; and besides this, most of the separate islands have some species peculiar to themselves. Thus Morty island has a peculiar kingfisher, honeysucker, and starling; Ternate has a ground-thrush (Pitta) and a flycatcher; Banda has a pigeon, a shrike, and a Pitta; Ke has two flycatchers, a Zosterops, a shrike, a king-crow and a cuckoo; and the remote Timor-Laut, which should probably come into the Moluccan group, has a cockatoo and lory as its only known birds, and both are of peculiar species.

The Moluccas are especially rich in the parrot tribe, no less than twenty-two species, belonging to ten genera, inhabiting them. Among these is the large red-crested cockatoo, so commonly seen alive in Europe, two handsome red parrots of the genus Eclectus, and five of the beautiful crimson lories, which are almost exclusively confined to these islands and the New Guinea group. The pigeons are hardly less abundant or beautiful, twenty-one species being known, including twelve of the beautiful green fruit pigeons, the smaller kinds of which are ornamented with the most brilliant patches of colour on the head and the under-surface. Next to these come the kingfishers, including sixteen species, almost all of which are beautiful, end many are among the most brilliantly-coloured birds that exist.

One of the most curious groups of birds, the Megapodii, or mound-makers, is very abundant in the Moluccas. They are gallinaceous birds, about the size of a small fowl, and generally of a dark ashy or sooty colour, and they have remarkably large and strong feet and long claws. They are allied to the "Maleo" of Celebes, of which an account has already been given, but they differ in habits, most of these birds frequenting the scrubby jungles along the sea-shore, where the soil is sandy, and there is a considerable quantity of debris, consisting of sticks, shells, seaweed, leaves, &c. Of this rubbish the Megapodius forms immense mounds, often six or eight feet high and twenty or thirty feet in diameter, which they are enabled to do with comparative ease, by means of their large feet, with which they can grasp and throw backwards a quantity of material. In the centre of this mound, at a depth of two or three feet, the eggs are deposited, and are hatched by the gentle heat produced by the fermentation of the vegetable matter of the mound. When I first saw these mounds in the island of Lombock, I could hardly believe that they were made by such small birds, but I afterwards met with them frequently, and have once or twice come upon the birds engaged in making them. They run a few steps backwards, grasping a quantity of loose material in one foot, and throw it a long way behind them. When once properly buried the eggs seem to be no more cared for, the young birds working their way up through the heap of rubbish, and running off at once into the forest. They come out of the egg covered with thick downy feathers, and have no tail, although the wings are full developed.

I was so fortunate as to discover a new species (Megapodius wallacei), which inhibits Gilolo, Ternate, and Bouru. It is the handsomest bird of the genus, being richly banded with reddish brown on the back and wings; and it differs from the other species in its habits. It frequents the forests of the interior, and comes down to the sea-beach to deposit its eggs, but instead of making a mound, or scratching a hole to receive them, it burrows into the sand to the depth of about three feet obliquely downwards, and deposits its eggs at the bottom. It then loosely covers up the mouth of the hole, and is said by the natives to obliterate and disguise its own footmarks leading to and from the hole, by making many other tracks and scratches in the neighbourhood. It lays its eggs only at night, and at Bouru a bird was caught early one morning as it was coming out of its hole, in which several eggs were found. All these birds seem to be semi-nocturnal, for their loud wailing cries may be constantly heard late into the night and long before daybreak in the morning. The eggs are all of a rusty red colour, and very large for the size of the bird, being generally three or three and a quarter inches long, by two or two and a quarter wide. They are very good eating, and are much sought after by the natives.

Another large and extraordinary bird is the Cassowary, which inhabits the island of Ceram only. It is a stout and strong bird, standing five or six feet high, and covered with long coarse black hair-like feathers. The head is ornamented with a large horny calque or helmet, and the bare skin of the neck is conspicuous with bright blue and red colours. The wings are quite absent, and are replaced by a group of horny black spines like blunt porcupine quills.

These birds wander about the vast mountainous forests that cover the island of Ceram, feeding chiefly on fallen fruits, and on insects or crustacea. The female lays from three to five large and beautifully shagreened green eggs upon a bed of leaves, the male and female sitting upon them alternately for about a month. This bird is the helmeted cassowary (Casuarius galeatus) of naturalists, and was for a long time the only species known. Others have since been discovered in New Guinea, New Britain, and North Australia.

It was in the Moluccas that I first discovered undoubted cases of "mimicry" among birds, and these are so curious that I must briefly describe them. It will be as well, however, first to explain what is meant by mimicry in natural history. At page 205 of the first volume of this work, I have described a butterfly which, when at rest, so closely resembles a dead leaf, that it thereby escape the attacks of its enemies. This is termed a "protective resemblance." If however the butterfly, being itself savoury morsel to birds, had closely resembled another butterfly which was disagreeable to birds, and therefore never eaten by them, it would be as well protected as if it resembled a leaf; and this is what has been happily termed "mimicry" by Mr. Bates, who first discovered the object of these curious external imitations of one insect by another belonging to a distinct genus or family, and sometimes even to a distinct order. The clear-winged moth which resemble wasps and hornets are the best examples of "mimicry" in our own country.

For a long time all the known cases of exact resemblance of one creature to quite a different one were confined to insects, and it was therefore with great pleasure that I discovered in the island of Bouru two birds which I constantly mistook for each other, and which yet belonged to two distinct and somewhat distant families. One of these is a honeysucker named Tropidorhynchus bouruensis, and the other a kind of oriole, which has been called Mimeta bouruensis. The oriole resembles the honeysucker in the following particulars: the upper and under surfaces of the two birds are exactly of the same tints of dark and light brown; the Tropidorhynchus has a large bare black patch round the eyes; this is copied in the Mimeta by a patch of black feathers. The top of the head of the Tropidorhynchus has a scaly appearance from the narrow scale-formed feathers, which are imitated by the broader feathers of the Mimeta having a dusky line down each. The Tropidorhynchus has a pale ruff formed of curious recurved feathers on the nape (which has given the whole genus the name of Friar birds); this is represented in the Mimeta by a pale band in the same position. Lastly, the bill of the Tropidorhynchus is raised into a protuberant keel at the base, and the Mimeta has the same character, although it is not a common one in the genus. The result is, that on a superficial examination the birds are identical, although they leave important structural differences, and cannot be placed near each other in any natural arrangement.