Eastern opossum, Cuscus orientalis; found also in the Moluccas, if not a
distinct species.
The fact that not one of these species is Australian or nearly allied to
any Australian form, is strongly corroborative of the opinion that Timor
has never formed a part of that country; as in that case some kangaroo
or other marsupial animal would almost certainly be found there. It is
no doubt very difficult to account for the presence of some of the few
mammals that do exist in Timor, especially the tiger cat and the deer.
We must consider, however, that during thousands, and perhaps hundreds
of thousands of years, these islands and the seas between them have
been subjected to volcanic action. The land has been raised and has sunk
again; the straits have been narrowed or widened; many of the islands
may have been joined and dissevered again; violent floods have again and
again devastated the mountains and plains, carrying out to sea hundreds
of forest trees, as has often happened during volcanic eruptions in
Java; and it does not seem improbable that once in a thousand, or ten
thousand years, there should have occurred such a favourable combination
of circumstances as would lead to the migration of two or three land
animals from one island to another. This is all that we need ask to
account for the very scanty and fragmentary group of Mammalia which now
inhabit the large island of Timor. The deer may very probably have been
introduced by man, for the Malays often keep tame fawns; and it may
not require a thousand, or even five hundred years, to establish new
characters in an animal removed to a country so different in climate and
vegetation as is Timor from the Moluccas. I have not mentioned horses,
which are often thought to be wild in Timor, because there are no
grounds whatever for such a belief. The Timor ponies have every one an
owner, and are quite as much domesticated animals as the cattle on a
South American hacienda.
I have dwelt at some length upon the origin of the Timorese fauna
because it appears to be a most interesting and instructive problem. It
is very seldom that we can trace the animals of a district so clearly as
we can in this case to two definite sources, and still more rarely that
they furnish such decisive evidence of the time, the manner, and the
proportions of their introduction. We have here a group of Oceanic
Islands in miniature--islands which have never formed part of the
adjacent lands, although so closely approaching them; and their
productions have the characteristics of true Oceanic Islands slightly
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