GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 321 



III. The Neotropical Region completes the great division 

 {Notogmi) proposed by Prof. Huxley. It presents certain alliances 

 to the Australian, and some to New Zealand ; but these are of a 

 diflerent kind, and there is no community between them. Looking 

 to the extreme remoteness of the time when this Region could even 

 by the most roundabout route have been connected with either (if 

 such a connexion ever existed), it is perhaps wonderful that any 

 resemblance remains. As a matter of fact the resemblance lies rather 

 in the comparatively low rank (morphologically siDeaking) that is 

 indicated by some of its most peculiar and at the same time 

 characteristic forms than in any positive affinity that they display, 

 for it must be evident that in the course of ages the ancient types 

 — at that epoch, may be, the most highly developed of their kind on 

 the earth — if they survive at all to the present day must have 

 become more and more specialized as various influences came to 

 bear upon them. Enough, however, remains to point with certainty 

 to the fact that South America, that is to say, the most important 

 part of the Neotropical Region, retains a greater proportion of these 

 less-modified descendants of generalized ornithic types than does any 

 other portion of the globe — the two Regions before mentioned only 

 excepted. The hint attbrded by the continued existence of an 

 Order (or, as some would have it, only a Family) of Marsupials — 

 the Pedimana, comprehending the animals to which the name 

 Opossum was first applied, ought to suffice for this. It has before 

 been suggested that there seems to have once been a period in 

 which the Didelphia formed the highest group of Mammalian and 

 therefore of animal life on the globe, and pervaded all parts of it that 

 were accessible. New Zealand, as has been indicated, was at that 

 time already cut off, and the Marsupials had no means of reaching it ; 

 but they spread over what is now represented by Australia and also 

 arrived in South America. It is reasonable to suppose that in each 

 of these countries they differentiated, and in Australia, from its sub- 

 sequent isolation, flourished in the way that has there produced the 



Ramsay's Tabular List of the species known to him in 1888 is useful in shewing 

 their distribution, but gives little more information. The Records of tJie 

 Aust7-alian Museum as well as some other journals contain, however, many 

 valuable papers by him, laying the foundation of future work, and Mr. A. J. 

 North's Descriptice Catalogue of the Nests and Eggs of Australian and Tasmanian 

 Birds (Sydney : 1889) cannot be passed over in silence. 



For other parts of the Region must be mentioned the Beitrag zur Fauna 

 Centralpoly7iesiens by Drs. Hartlaub and Finsch (Halle : 1867), treating of the 

 ornithology of Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga, but very much has since been done in 

 these and other groups of islands which cannot be here particularized, while the 

 Ornitologia della Papuasia e delle Mohicche by Count T. Salvador! (Torino : 

 1880-82), with its Aggiunte (1889-91), is a most carefully executed work. A 

 complete list of Polynesian Birds by Mr. L. W. Wiglesworth appeared in 1891 

 at Dresden. 



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