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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.

An interesting feature, however, in Australian scenery is the Great Barrier Reef. This is the remains of a former north-eastward extension of Australia—an immense coral reef stretching out for several hundred miles from the coast of Queensland in the direction of New Caledonia and the New Hebrides. This reef of visible and sunken rocks acted as a great barrier in the past, and prevented timid navigators from finding the north-east coast of Australia and establishing its separation from New Guinea. But the reef is of importance to commerce, for it maintains enormous quantities of the Trepang or Sea-slug, a creature which makes delicious soup and is passionately liked by the Chinese. [It is not really a slug but a relation of the star-fish, and is called scientifically a Holothurian.] The Great Barrier Reef is famous for the variety and almost incredible beauty of its corals and of the painted and decorated fish, anemones, and crabs of these shallow waters. It is, in fact, a region of such wonderful and strange beauty that one can only hope it will some day be made a kind of national aquarium by the Commonwealth of Australia, and constantly visited by those who like to gaze on the marvellous animals of a tropical coral sea.

The rocky coasts of Australia and Tasmania (besides those of the Philippines and the Pacific Islands) are remarkable for their abundant supplies of oysters, clams, whelks, and other shell-fish, which for ages have been a great food supply to savage man,[8] who had in fact merely to take at low tide what nature offered to him, at very little trouble to himself. Some of the clams (Tridacna) are enormous, measuring 3 feet and even 5 feet across the upper shell.

The crocodiles, pythons, and monitor lizards of Australia have been already alluded to in the description of Austro-Malaysia. There should, however, be mentioned in addition the long-necked tortoises of the continent and the turtles of the seacoasts. Australia once produced immense horned and armoured tortoises, but they became extinct soon after man entered this remote land. There are no vipers or rattlesnakes in Australia; all the poisonous snakes (and there are many) belong to the Cobra family. The most singular in appearance of the living land reptiles is a very large Agama lizard (the Chlamydosaurus), which is as much as 3 feet long, runs or hops on its hind limbs, and when angry erects a huge frill of leathery skin round the chest and shoulders. Another equally strange form of the Agama family is the Moloch lizard, about 1 foot long, with a very small mouth, but protected by the covering of its skin—a mass of sharp spines, thorns, and knobs. Its skin is not only very rough, but very absorbent, so that it will suck up water like blotting paper.

The beasts and birds of Australia are, in most cases, peculiar to that continent. The former belong almost entirely to the marsupial sub-class, that is to say, they consist of creatures like the Kangaru, Phalanger, and Thylacine (besides the Opossums of America), which, after the young is born, place it in a pouch on the outside of the mother's stomach, where it is kept until it is able to forage for itself. In many respects these marsupials evince a low organization, and really resemble, in their jaws and teeth, primitive mammals of ancient times discovered in fossil in Great Britain and North America. New Guinea also possesses some of these marsupial types, derived probably from Australia. The most widespread of these is the Spotted Cuscus, a phalanger with a woolly coat, the male of which has large black or brown spots on a cream-coloured ground, while the female is uniform brown. This animal ranges through the easternmost Malay islands from Celebes to New Guinea and north Australia, while another species, the Grey Cuscus, is found as far east as the Bismarck Archipelago and the northern Solomon islands. These outlying groups of islands to the east of New Guinea also possess a flying Phalanger, but otherwise no marsupials penetrate into the Pacific islands beyond New Guinea and Australia. For the rest, New Guinea has Short-legged Kangarus (Dorcopsis), Tree Kangaroos (Dendrolagus), Striped Phalangers, Dormice Phalangers, Flying Phalangers, Feather-tailed Phalangers, Ring-tailed Phalangers, a species of white-spotted Dasyure ("Marsupial Cat"), and several forms of insectivorous marsupials ("Bandicoots" of the genera Phascologale and Perameles). But the true Kangarus—especially the big species—the Banded Ant-eater, the Wombats (which look like huge rabbits), the Koala or Tailless Phalanger (the "native bear"), the striped marsupial wolf or Thylacine, the Tasmanian Devil, the Marsupial Mole, most of the Dasyures and Bandicoots, are confined in their distribution to Australia and Tasmania, Tasmania being the richest part of Australia in marsupial types.

But this region, in common with New Guinea, possesses mammals still more primitive and interesting than the marsupials—the egg-laying sub-class, which contains the two existing forms of Echidna (Porcupine Ant-eater) and Duckbill. The Duckbill, a furry creature the size of a large cat, with the jaws converted into a leathery beak, is only found in the south-east of Australia and in Tasmania. The Echidna and Duckbill do not produce their young alive, but lay eggs from which the young are hatched. Apart from these marsupials and egg-laying mammals, Australia possesses only a few species of the higher mammals: a wild dog, a number of rats—aquatic and terrestrial—and bats; besides, of course, seals on the coasts and rivers, and the strange Dugong.[9] The bats are both of the insect-eating and fruit-eating kinds, and have probably flown over in recent times from New Guinea. From the same direction likewise have travelled the Australian rats, some of which have taken to a water life. As to the Dingo or Wild Dog, that may have been introduced by the early human inhabitants who came to Australia from Malaysia, but it has inhabited Australia for a very long period, though it did not reach Tasmania. It is related to a wild dog of Java. There is said to be a wild dingo in New Guinea.

Australian birds are very noteworthy. In the extreme north there is the Cassowary, which elsewhere is only found in New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Island of Ceram. Nearly the whole of Australia, however, was at one time frequented by the Emu, a large, flightless bird only second in size to the Ostrich. The Emu once extended its range to Tasmania as well as to Kangaroo Island, off the south coast of the continent. The Parrot order is more abundantly represented in Australia than anywhere else. In New Zealand and the tiny Norfolk Island there are species of a remarkable type of Parrot—the Nestor—which has a very long beak, not deep, like that of other parrots. The family of brush-tongued Lories is represented in the island continent by many beautiful forms. Here also developed originally the Cockatoos, which have since spread to New Guinea and the eastern Malay islands. The True Parrots and Parrakeets are well represented in New Guinea and Australia, and assume in some cases the most lovely and delicate coloration.

THE BIGGEST OF THE KANGAROOS

(From a specimen sent from Australia to the New York Zoological Park)

Amongst other noteworthy Australian birds is the Lyre Bird, in two or three species. This is a distant connection of thrushes and warblers, the size of a pheasant, and with very pheasantlike habits. Although the colour of its body is simply brown of various tints, the male bird has a most remarkable tail, the larger feathers of which exactly reproduce the form of a lyre. This creature is one of the minor wonders of the world, and it is therefore surprising that the great Commonwealth of Australia should take no measures to prevent its extermination at the hands of thoughtless and ignorant settlers, for, unlike the cockatoos, it does no damage to crops.

Australia also possesses the Black Swan, and it has a strange-looking, long-legged Goose, which has scarcely any web between its toes. There are numerous Eagles and Hawks, but there is no Vulture. There is also no True Crow, but there are Choughs and many crow-like developments of the Shrike, Oriole, and Starling groups, and in the extreme north of Australia, besides one or two Birds of Paradise, there are the singular Bower Birds (really belonging to the same family), who build little palaces and ornamental gardens of sticks, shells, feathers, pebbles, and other bright and attractive objects, as places in which they can go through their courtship ceremonies. The mound-building Megapodes or Brush Turkeys (which do not hatch their eggs by sitting on them, but bury the egg in a mound of decaying vegetation) also inhabit eastern and northern Australia, and are the only representatives there of the gallinaceous order. Amongst Kingfishers is the celebrated Laughing Jackass, which lives not on fish but on insects and carrion. Australia has no Woodpeckers, no Hornbills, no Cuckoos, and no True Pheasants, and a good many other bird families are remarkable for their absence from this region.

The scenery of New Zealand, in contrast to that of Australia, is nearly everywhere beautiful—as nature made it—though the modern settlers have robbed the island of much of its loveliness by cutting down the forests recklessly, destroying the ferns, and shooting the song birds. In the North Island of New Zealand are the most remarkable examples of volcanic activity, and this region has, or had—for they sometimes disappear in earthquake convulsions—beautiful crater lakes of deep blue or emerald green and terraces of congealed lava or pumicestone that assume lovely tints of pink, pale yellow, green or bluish grey.

The trees and plants of New Zealand have a character quite as peculiar and distinct as those of Australia. Amongst them grow beech trees similar to those of South Australia, and allied to the beeches of South America. There are only two species of a single genus of palm (Rhopalostylis), but there are many conifers allied to those of New Guinea and South America rather than to the conifers of Australia. The Kauri "pine" (Agathis) has been already mentioned. None of the conifers of Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and New Caledonia are "pines", "cedars", or "firs". The members of the pine family are entirely restricted to the Northern Hemisphere. The magnificent "pines" of New Caledonia and its adjacent islands are Araucarias ("monkey puzzles"). Besides an abundance of ferns (including the bracken), the undergrowth of New Zealand is chiefly composed of Veronica bushes, of fuchsias, and calceolarias. New Zealand has no deserts, and is blessed with a constant and a fairly abundant rainfall. It is as unlike Australia in appearance as it could well be, and much more resembles in general appearance our own country of England or the southernmost parts of South America.

New Zealand and New Caledonia were evidently cut off from their ancient connection with the New Hebrides and New Guinea before mammals had spread in that direction. New Zealand was entirely without any form of beast, except bats and seals, when first colonized by the Maoris; but this Polynesian people brought with them in their canoes a rat which they bred for eating, and a small, foxy-looking, domestic dog. Of the bats there are two kinds: one a small nocturnal bat, allied to the European Pipistrelle; and the other a very remarkable and isolated form, a "day" bat (Mystacops), which climbs about the trees, has very narrow wings, and does not fly much. The seals on the coast, which made New Zealand so attractive to the American and English whaling ships, consisted of a "Sea Bear" (Otaria), the Sea Elephant (now extinct), and four other large Antarctic species of true Seal. New Zealand had no great variety in species of birds, which belonged mainly to the Goose, Rail, Eagle, Parrot, Honeyeater, and Corvine groups. Amongst the most noteworthy of modern New Zealand birds are the Kaka Parrot of North Island and the handsome Kea Parrot of the South Island (both of the genus Nestor). The last-named has lately taken to attacking sheep. Another very interesting form is the Stringops or Tarapo Ground Parrot (sometimes called the Owl Parrot). The Huia is a chough-like bird with orange wattles and a beak which, though straight in the male is sickle-shaped in the female. The Tui Honeyeater or parson bird has two delicate white plumes below each cheek. But it is the extinct birds which will always make New Zealand interesting. Amongst these was the largest type of bird which has probably ever existed—the Moa. We now know that besides Moas with long necks and small heads, which stood about 12 feet high, and were bigger than ostriches, there were other and much smaller types of the same order. One of these still survives: it is the so-called wingless Apteryx, which comes out at night, and with its long beak searches for worms. These Moas, of many sorts and sizes, probably still lived in the three islands of the New Zealand dominion when they were first discovered by the Polynesians; but being without any adequate means of defence, and quite unable to fly, they were soon exterminated, only the nocturnal Apteryx remaining. It is possible that these great ostrich-like birds reached New Zealand from the direction of Queensland and New Caledonia. [New Caledonia possesses one bird, which is found nowhere else in the world, though it has relations in South America. This is the Kagu, a pretty, grey, heron-like creature, which is really a sort of dwarf crane.] Two other remarkable bird developments once existed in New Zealand: a large, flightless goose (Cnemiornis), and a huge, thick-set Harpy Eagle (Harpagornis). This last no doubt fed mainly on the Moas, and died out when they became extinct.

New Zealand has only one kind of frog, no snakes, no tortoises, and only one true lizard (a Gecko), but it possesses all to itself an indigenous reptile of the greatest possible interest. This is the Tuatera (or Sphenodon), now restricted in its range to three or four islets off the northernmost coasts of New Zealand. Once this creature, which is about 3 to 4 feet long, ranged over the whole of New Zealand. It has been killed out mainly by the white settlers, and unless some effort is made will soon have disappeared altogether. This would be a great pity, for it is one of the most interesting of living things. It is the scarcely changed descendant of a very early order of reptiles which came into being millions of years ago and inhabited Europe and Asia.