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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.