Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstrait561880roya).pdf/171



THE TIGER IN BORNEO.

The close general uniformity of the Fauna of Borneo with that of the Malayan Peninsula and Sumatra is a well known fact, and the progress of research has steadily lessened such differences as were, even of late years, supposed to exist. The main conclusion drawn by Zoologists from this circumstance is that the island of Borneo has formed, at a very recent geological epoch, an integral portion of the south-eastern extension of the Asiatic continent; and that, consequently, the animals which now inhabit it immigrated into its area over a continuous land-surface, and were not introduced by those fortuitous accidents which effect the peopling of all ordinary insular tracts of land.

This being the case, it is remarkable that, whilst all the larger mammals of the Peninsula-elephant, rhinoceros, tapir, wild oxen, &c. are found existing in both areas, the tiger, which is so abundant in the last named district and so peculiarly fitted by its restless habits to extend its range rapidly over a continuous and congenial habitat, should be entirely wanting in Borneo alone of the three great Sunda islands. Borneo, so far as we can see, furnishes the conditions of life suitable for this animal's existence in a degree no less than do the Peninsula, or Sumatra, or Java. And yet, so far from the tiger itself having been observed, not even a relic of it in a fossil condition has ever been recorded.