IV. — MISCELLANEOUS. 



Art. XLVI. — On tJie Ancient Relations betioecn Neiv Zealand 



and Soutli America. 



By Dr. H. von Jheeing, Eio Graude do Sul, Brazil. 



Communicated by Professor Hutton. 



[Translated from the German by H. Suter.] 



[Read before the PJiilosophical Instittctc of Canterbury, 6th August, 1891.1 



The following comn\miication is due to the elaborate papers 

 of Professor F. W. Hutton " On the Origin of the Fauna and 

 Flora of New Zealand,"" which were made accessible to me 

 by the great kindness of the author. On the whole, the views 

 contained in those papers agree with my own ideas of the 

 former connection between the areas under consideration, 

 which are in opposition to Mr. Wallace, from the views of 

 whom I, W'ith Professor Hutton, differ in very essential 

 points. 



In my opinion, an important defect in Mr. Wallace's studies 

 is the fact that he makes too little distinction between the 

 different groups of the animal kingdom. Birds and mammals, 

 whose living genera appear only in the Tertiary era, must 

 evidently show a different geographical distribution from the 

 Teleostei, reptiles, &c., which are represented in the Creta- 

 ceous and beginning of the Tertiary era ; or to the land and 

 fresh-water molluscs, many of which were living already dur- 

 ing the Secondary or even the Palaeozoic era. Mr. A. R. Wal- 

 lace (" Darwinism," 2nd ed., London, 1889) still upholds the 

 doctrine of the " permanence of oceanic and continental areas." 

 I am as UjUcIi convinced of the erroneousness of this doctrine, 

 which quite arbitrarily takes the 1,000-fathom line as corre- 

 sponding essentially to the limit of the ancient continents, as I 

 am that the ideas of Darwin and Wallace on " natural selec- 

 tion " as the cause of the origin of species will have but a 



* Annals and Magazine of Natural History, ser. 5, vol. xiii., p. 425, 

 and vol. xv., p. 77. 



