500 THE CAT. [CHAP, xiv 



Finally, the Australian region is made up of Australia, witli 

 Tasmania, New Guinea, Celebes, tlie Moluccas, and islands of the 

 Malay Archipelago up to and including Lumbok, and also of JN^ew 

 Zealand and the Polynesian Islands. 



This great region is distinguished as the home of the marsupial 

 and monotrematous mammals. 



Only in the part which approaches the Indian region do we find 

 any ape or civet cat, with an ox (the anoa), hogs, deer and some 

 squirrels. Flying foxes, however, exist even in Australia itself. 

 As to birds, there are no vultures or woodpeckers, or true finches 

 or pheasants, while we have, as absolutely peculiar to the region, 

 birds of paradise,* honeysuckers {Melephagidce), lyre-birds, bower- 

 birds, cockatoos, many parrots, the brush-tongued lories, the mound- 

 making 3Iegapodiiis, the emeu, the cassowary, and (in New Zealand) 

 the apteryx. It is also the head-quarters of the group of kingfishers, 

 and it has many pigeons, including the crowTied pigeon and the 

 hook-billed Bidunculus. There are also large goatsuckers, and a 

 variety of Aveaver-birds and sun-birds. A multitude of snalies 

 exist, and very many poisonous ones, but no true vipers and no 

 rat tie -snakes. As in India, we find gavials as well as crocodiles, 

 but no alligators. Only in the Malayan part of the region are 

 there any land tortoises. Absolutely peculiar reptilian forms are 

 the Piigopm, the frilled lizard, the Moloch lizard, and above all (in 

 New Zealand) the lizard 8phe)iodon.-\ There are no OpMomorpha, 

 and no efts, but there are very many frogs and toads. As to fresh- 

 water fishes, we have the very noteworthy Ceratodus (an ancient 

 triassic form here still surviving), while both the perch and carp 

 families are wanting. 



New Zealand is very remarkable for the almost entire absence of 

 indigenous mammalian life — marsupial, no less than placental. 

 There, birds are almost the highest animals below man, and there, 

 until his arrival, they held undisputed sway as represented by the 

 huge creatures belonging to the genus Dinornis. 



The Australian region then is not merely distinguished by an 

 absence of cats, but by the presence of an animal population which 

 could hardly have co-existed with them. In the "West Indies and 

 Madagascar, cats may be absent merely through the accident of the 

 non-introduction into those parts of the earth's surface of a large 

 number of mammalian forms of life, amongst which the cats were 

 included. Yet we do find there some mammals more or less allied 

 to cats ; but their numbers are few, while the place of the Carnivora 

 is not taken by a great variety of other forms remote from them in 

 structure and affinity. In Australia, however, while the whole sub- 

 class to which the Fclidce belong is conspicuous by its absence, it is 

 replaced and represented by a multitude of creatures belonging to 

 another sub-class, i.e., to the Didelphia. Thus the Australian 



* New Guinea forms. 



•|- A last survivor of a group of forms long passed away. 



