WCP820

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset

Jan[uar]y 29^th 1900

Dear Mr Hartert,

Many thanks for your interesting letter with the approximate number of Papuan birds. I quite agree with your limitations of the restricted Papuan-region — with one exception — that of the Ke Islands. These I think decidedly belong to the Turn Lant or the Jemember group or to the molucas & they are quite cut off from Papua by deep water. The map in my Malay Archipelago shows that the 100 fathom line includes Arm, Mysol, Waigion, Jolie & Look, but leaves Ke quite outside it. I see by the later map in [2] Stanford’s Australasia vol. II that Mysol & Look are just outside the 100 fathom line, but are all included in the 200 fathom line which quite excludes the Ke islands, & also, as you decide, New Britain etc.

And as even a Bird of Paradise does not bring Batchian into the Papuan area so there can be nothing in the fauna of Ke to bring them in. It is a pity too, to spoil the neatness of the definition of the New Guinea fauna proper, as including "all the islands within the 200 fathom [3] line of New Guinea".

Will you be so good as to give me one more figure — the member of species of Birds of Paradise omitting the Bower Birds, — but including of course the Epomaclude. No minute accuracy required but merely the number of species you recognize.

Also if you can tell me, approximately, the number of species of Ke islands birds you have added to the Papuan fauna in the list you sent me which I should like to exclude.

[4] I myself think it almost certain that when the great central mass of N. Guinea is explored with its grand range of mountains, so many new birds will be found that the number — even of true land birds — will reach 1000 or perhaps more.

Yours very truly,

Alfred R Wallace [signature]

Ernst Harlert Esq.

I omit aquatic & wading birds, simply because they are so little collected compared with land-birds in such countries as New Guinea, & because they range so widely — also because in northern continental areas they form so much larger a proportion of all birds.

A.R.W.