62 DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. [PART 1. 
Mr. Sclater in his Lectures on Geographical Distribution at the 
Zoological Gardens in May 1874), because it is absolutely with- 
out indigenous mammalia and very poor in all forms of life, 
and therefore by no means prominent or important enough to 
form a primary region of the earth. 
It may be as well here to notice what appears to be a serious 
objection to making New Zealand, or any similar isolated 
district, one of the great zoological regions, comparable to South 
America, Australia, or Ethiopia ; which is, that its claim to that 
distinction rests on grounds which are liable to fail. It is 
because New Zealand, in addition to its negative merits, possesses 
three families of birds (Apterygide living, Dinornithide and 
Palapterygide extinct), and a peculiar lizard-like reptile, 
Hatteria, which has to be classed in a distinct order, Rhyncho- 
cephalina, that the rank of a Region is claimed for it. But 
supposing, what is not at all improbable, that other Rhyncho- 
cephalina should be discovered in the interior of Australia or 
in New Guinea, and that Apterygide or Palapterygide should 
be found to have inhabited Australia in Post-Pliocene times, 
(as Dinornithide have already been proved to have done) the 
claims of New Zealand would entirely fail, and it would be 
universally acknowledged to be a part of the great Australian 
region. No such reversal can take place in the case of the 
other regions ; because they rest, not upon one or two, but upon a 
large number of peculiarities, of such a nature that there is no 
room upon the globe for discoveries that can seriously modify 
them. Even if one or two peculiar types, like Apterygide or 
Hatteria, should permanently remain characteristic of New Zea- 
land alone, we can account for these by the extreme isolation of 
the country, and the absence of enemies, which have enabled 
these defenceless birds and reptiles to continue their existence ; 
just as the isvlation and protection of the caverns of Carniola 
have enabled the Proteus to survive in Europe. But supposing 
that the Proteus was the sole representative of an order of 
Batrachia, and that two or three other equally curious and 
isolated forms occurred with it, no one would propose that these 
caverns or the district containing them, should form one of the 
