Mkyrick. — Revision of the New Zealand Caradrinina. 91 



use it in a sense in which it has never been used by any one, a result of his 

 principle which can only induce confusion. 



The Caradrinina are a highly developed modern group of immense 

 extent, but, with the exception of the Melanchrid group of the Caradri- 

 nidae, they are represented in New Zealand only by a very few scattered 

 stragglers, and some very extensive families and subfamilies are not repre- 

 sented at all. There can be little doubt that these stragglers are the 

 outcome of accidental wind-borne immigration over a wide expanse of 

 sea, which accounts for their scantiness. If New Zealand ever had easy 

 communication with any land, such land did not at that time contain any 

 of these poorly represented groups ; but, as these groups are of relatively 

 recent origin, such communication may have existed in earlier times. Now, 

 as the Melanchrid group possesses no sort of advantage that would explain 

 their easier introduction, and as this group is, on the whole, quite as well 

 developed in New Zealand as in any other region, I consider it good evidence 

 that an easy communication with some land did once exist, and that the 

 Melanchrid group then existed in the land in question and made their 

 way into New Zealand. It does not follow that the Melanchrid group is 

 older than any other group of the Caradrinina, because any or all of the 

 'other groups may have coexisted at the same time in other regions cut off 

 from New Zealand and the land in question by wide seas. This raises the 

 interesting problem of determining where the land in question was, and 

 a proper comprehension of the classification and geographical distribution 

 of the Melanchrid group would enable us to solve it with tolerable cer- 

 tainty. We do not yet possess this comprehension, but offer the following 

 considerations. The only possible lands seem to be four — viz., Australia, 

 the Pacific islands, South America, and the Antarctic Continent. Australia 

 may be excluded ; the Melanchrid fauna is pretty well known, and makes 

 no near approximation to that of New Zealand. The South Pacific islands 

 are certainly incompletely known, but there is no evidence that what exists 

 of them at the present day possesses any special Melanchrid fauna such as 

 might be expected on this assumption. The Antarctic Continent naturally 

 possesses no existing fauna, and, although it may have served as a route 

 of communication, there is nothing to show that it ever had one of an 

 aboriginal type. We are therefore reduced to look to South America, 

 and the few species known from Chile, Patagonia, and the Falkland Isles 

 (probably only a small fraction of those existing) are of a character which, 

 in my opinion, agrees well with the New Zealand types, and probably 

 indicates real affinity. I suppose, therefore, that the Melanchrid fauna 

 entered New Zealand from South America, probably by way of the antarctic 

 land, where it may have undergone some modification during a perhaps 

 prolonged passage, at a date so far remote that considerable specific and 

 some generic development has taken place since. With it doubtless came 

 Xarithorhoe, Notoreas, Selidosema, Crambus, Diptychophora, Scoparia, and 

 Borkhausenia, the largest and most characteristic genera of the New Zealand 

 fepidopterous fauna. Probably the original source of this fauna was the 

 temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, and it travelled to South 

 America by the great mountain-chain of the Kocky Mountains and Andes. 

 At the time when this fauna left North America probably the Indian region, 

 which has been the principal source of lepidopterous evolution, was isolated, 

 and extensive developments may have been going on there ; but, as the 

 Caradrinidae as a whole must have originated in some one region, it cer- 

 tainly seems that the Melanchrid group must have been, speaking generally, 



