THEORY OF A PACIFIC CONTINENT 
323 
tive and oldest groups of land-snails. And, as Dr. Pilsbry 
facetiously puts it, “ it is very easy to show that snails may 
have been carried from place to place by a hurricane, a float¬ 
ing tree or ‘ floating island,’ or that their eggs may find room 
in the pellet of earth clinging to a bird’s feather, but it is in¬ 
cumbent upon the theorist who peoples the mid-Pacific islands 
by such means to show why such dominant groups as the Heli- 
cidae, Bulimulidae, Rhytididae, Streptaxidae—in fact the 
whole Holopoda and Agnathomorpha, with the higher mem¬ 
bers of the aulacopod families, as well as the higher opercu- 
lates—should have utterly failed to take advantage of these 
means of transport.” Instead of being a faunal dependency of 
the Australian or Oriental regions, Polynesia has every ap¬ 
pearance, says Dr. Pilsbry, of being a region which started 
with a fauna long antedating the present Australian and 
Oriental faunas, developing along its own lines, retaining old 
types because they did not come into competition with the 
higher groups of animal life. Dr. Pilsbry’s conclusion is that 
a Pacific Continent existed, which was finally separated from 
other lands as early as the middle of the Mesozoic Era, and 
that the northern portion became disconnected when the 
remainder was still joined to the mainland.* 
A careful review of the distribution of the ants and lizards 
in particular led Professor Baur f to formulate the theory 
of a former Indo-Pacific Continent extending from Malaysia 
to the west coast of America. He looked upon the Pacific 
islands as the last remnants of this continent, which still 
existed, he thinks, until the commencement of the Miocene 
Period. 
Mr. Hedley,$ who took part in the famous Funafuti Ex¬ 
pedition, and has had the advantage of studying the problems 
of dispersal on the spot, altogether disbelieves in a Pacific 
Continent in the sense of Baur, Pilsbry and Hutton, but he 
suggests that New Zealand was formerly connected with Aus¬ 
tralia by way of New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, Solomon 
islands and New Guinea. Even the Fiji islands come within 
this scheme. Some years earlier he had already demonstrated 
* Pilsbry, H. A., “ Genesis of Mid-Pacific Faunas,” pp. 569—578. 
f Baur, G., “ New Observations on the Galapagos Islands,” p. 869. 
X Hedley, C., “Zoogeographic Scheme,” pp. 400—405. 
Y 2 
