CHAPTER XXXIX. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PAPUAN ISLANDS.
NEW GUINEA, with the islands joined to it by a shallow sea, constitute the Papuan group, characterised by a very close resemblance in their peculiar forms of life. Having already, in my chapters on the Aru Islands and on the Birds of Paradise, given some details of the natural history of this district, I shall here confine myself to a general sketch of its animal productions, and of their relations to those of the rest of the world.
New Guinea is perhaps the largest island on the globe, being a little larger than Borneo. It is nearly fourteen hundred miles long, and in the widest part four hundred broad, and seems to be everywhere covered with luxuriant forests. Almost everything that is yet known of its natural productions comes from the north-western peninsula, and a few islands grouped around it. These do not constitute a tenth part of the area of the whole island, and are so cut off from it, that their fauna may well he somewhat different; yet they have produced us (with a very partial exploration) no less than two hundred and fifty species of land birds, almost all unknown elsewhere, and comprising some of the most curious and most beautiful of the feathered tribes. It is needless to say how much interest attaches to the far larger unknown portion of this great island, the greatest terra incognita that still remains for the naturalist to explore, and the only region where altogether new and unimagined forms of life may perhaps be found. There is now, I am happy to say, some chance that this great country will no longer remain absolutely unknown to us. The Dutch Government have granted well-equipped steamer to carry a naturalist (Mr. Rosenberg, already mentioned in this work) and assistants to New Guinea, where they are to spend some years in circumnavigating the island, ascending its large rivers a< far as possible into the interior, and making extensive collections of its natural productions.
The Mammalia of New Guinea and the adjacent islands, yet discovered, are only seventeen in number. Two of these are bats, one is a pig of a peculiar species (Sus papuensis), and the rest are all marsupials. The bats are, no doubt, much more numerous, but there is every reason to believe that whatever new land Mammalia man be discovered will belong to the marsupial order. One of these is a true kangaroo, very similar to some of middle-sized kangaroos of Australia, and it is remarkable as being the first animal of the kind ever seen by Europeans. It inhabits Mysol and the Aru Islands (an allied species being found in New Guinea), and was seen and described by Le Brun in 1714, from living specimens at Batavia. A much more extraordinary creature is the tree-kangaroo, two species of which are known from New Guinea. These animals do not differ very strikingly in form from the terrestrial kangaroos, and appear to be but imperfectly adapted to an arboreal life, as they move rather slowly, and do not seem to have a very secure footing on the limb of a tree. The leaping power of the muscular tail is lost, and powerful claws have been acquired to assist in climbing, but in other respects the animal seems better adapted to walls on terra firma. This imperfect adaptation may be due to the fact of there being no carnivore in New Guinea, and no enemies of any kind from which these animals have to escape by rapid climbing. Four species of Cuscus, and the small flying opossum, also inhabit New Guinea; and there are five other smaller marsupials, one of which is the size of a rat, and takes its place by entering houses and devouring provisions.