Birds of New Zealand. 217 



subject, had not lately the attempt been made by Professor 

 Alphonse Milne-Edwards, in Paris, to show, from a compa- 

 rison of the remains of the extinct ornithic fauna exhumed in 

 Madagascar, Mauritius, and Rodriguez, that in some distant 

 ages New Zealand formed portion of a large continent or of 

 a group of more or less extensive islands in the southern 

 hemisphere, which at one time were in some way connected 

 with each other. 



He thinks that additional confirmation can be obtained 

 from the ascertained occurrence of different Ocydromidae, 

 such as the Aphanapteryx and the Misery thrus leguati, which 

 latter, he informs me (letter to me, dated " Jardin des Plantes, 

 Paris, Aug. 3, 1873"), bears close resemblance to our com- 

 mon Woodhen {Ocydromus australis). 



However enticing the tracing of close affinities must be to 

 the naturalist-philosopher, I believe that it would be rather 

 rash to conclude the connexion of two such distant insular 

 groups from a few forms of birds only. Leaving the general 

 question alone for the present, to which I shall return shortly, 

 it is impossible for me to conceive that two countries, which 

 in all other respects have such a dissimilar and distinctive 

 flora and fauna could have been united in any way without 

 having left other living proofs of such connexion in their pre- 

 sent endemic organic life, not to speak of fossil remains. 



We know that Madagascar is a zoological subprovince of 

 South Africa (Ethiopian region), but having a fauna so pecu- 

 liar that, according to Sir Charles Lyell, it must have been 

 separated from Africa probably since the Upper Miocene era. 

 New Zealand, on the other hand, although it may have 

 been formerly of larger extent, has never been more than an 

 oceanic continental island from a zoological point of view — a 

 theory first propounded by Darwin and Wallace, and with 

 which I fully agree. 



It would be rather a difficult task to prove upon such slen- 

 der grounds as the presence of a few species of struthious and 

 ralline birds will afford, that both countries could possibly 

 have been connected. Moreover the difference in the ana- 

 tomical structure of the three Madagascar species of jEpy- 



