GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 317 



regret is quite apart from all questions of sentiment ; but just as 

 we lament our ignorance of the species which in various lands have 

 been extirpated by our predecessors, so our posterity will Avant to 

 know much more of the present avifauna of New Zealand than we 

 can possibly record, for no one can pretend to predict the scope of 

 investigation which will be required, and rec|uired in vain, by 

 naturalists in that future when New Zealand may be one of the 

 great nations of the earth. ^ 



II. The Australian Eegion has but little intimate connexion Avith 

 New Zealand, and is as trenchantly divided from the Indian. 

 Avhich geographically, and possibly geologically, seems to be conter- 

 minous with it, by the nai-row but deep channel that separates the 

 small islands of Bali and Lombok, and will be found to determine 

 the boundary betAveen these two distinct Regions. MidAvay along 

 this channel we may draAv an imaginary line, and produce it in a 

 north-north-easterly direction through the Strait of Macassar, dividing 

 Borneo from Celebes. An interchange of animal forms in the tAvo 

 islands last named is indeed to be observed, and even a slight inter- 

 mingling of the productions of the two former seems to be noAv 

 going on, but to a much less degree than obtains between any other 

 tAvo Regions, AA-hile the characteristic, not to say peculiar, zoological 

 types Avhich occupy either side of this line, are so divergent that it 

 may be fairly deemed more definite than any to be found elseAvhere. 

 Between Bali and Lombok, as above stated, it has been sheAvn by 

 Mr. Wallace to be all but perfect, and in his honoui' this boundary 

 Avas most justly named by Prof. Huxley {Proc. Zool. Soc. 1868, 

 p. 313) "Wallace's Line."- As it proceeds northAvard it becomes 

 less definite, though we knoAv it to run betAveen the Philippine 

 Islands and Sanguir, and again between the former and the Palau 

 (PeleAv) group, its further progress in that direction being to the 

 Avestward of the Ladrones. But hereabouts Ave lose it, until Ave 

 reach the Sandwich Islands, the Fauna of Avhich, in deference to 

 usage, may perhaps be still accounted Australian, though apparently 

 Neogjean at bottom, and subsequently overlaid by Holarctic foi'ms.^ 

 Thence the line must be draAvn so as to include all of Avhat is 



^ See Sir AValter Buller's Birds of New Zealand. London : 1873, -Ito (with 

 beautifully coloured plates) : ed, 2, London : 1888, 2 \'ols. fol. ; and Manual of 

 the Birds of New Zealand. ISevj Zealand: 1882, 8vo, as Avell as many pajjers 

 by various authors in the Transactions of the Neiv Zealand Institute from 1868 

 onward. 



" Its existence was first indicated by Mr. Wallace in The Ibis ior 1859 (p. 450). 

 He subsequently {Proc. Zool. Soc. 1863, p. 481) insisted on its importance, which 

 was fully shewn in his Malay Archipelago. 



^ Cf. Dr. Gadow's " Remarks on the Structure of certain Hawaiian Birds " in 

 Wilson's Birds of the Sandtvich Islands. A similar conclusion had been before 

 reached by Messrs. Sharp and Blackburn in their memoir on Hawaiian Coleoptcra 

 [Trans. R. Dubl. Soc. ser. 2, iii. part 6, pp. 119-300). 



