450 ZOOLOGICAL GEOGRAPHY. [PART IIL. 
New Zealand, there would have been formed an island-con- 
tinent not much inferior in extent to Australia itself. 
New Zealand is wholly situated in the warmer portion of 
the Temperate zone, and enjoys an exceptionally mild and 
equable climate. It has abundant moisture, and thus comes 
within the limits of the South-Temperate forest zone; and this 
leads to its productions often resembling those of the tropical, 
but moist and wooded, islands of the Pacific, rather than those 
of the temperate, but arid and scantily wooded plains of Aus- 
tralia. The two islands of New Zealand are about the same 
extent (approximately) as the British Isles, but the difference in 
the general features of their natural history is very great. There 
are, in the former, no mammalia, less than half as many birds, 
very few reptiles and fresh-water fishes, and an excessive and 
most unintelligible poverty of insects; yet, considering the 
situation of the islands and their evidently long-continued 
isolation, the wonder rather is that their fauna is so varied 
and interesting as it is found to be. Our knowledge of this 
fauna, though no doubt far from complete, is_ sufficiently 
ample; and it will be well to give a pretty full account of 
it, in order to see what conclusions may be drawn as te its 
origin. . 
Mammalia.—The only mammals positively known as indi- 
genous:to New Zealand are two bats, both peculiar to it,—Scoto- 
philus tuberculatus and Mystacina tuberculata. The former is 
allied to Australian forms; the latter is more interesting, as 
being a peculiar genus of the family Noctilionidz, which does 
not exist in Australia; and in having decided resemblances to 
the Phyllostomide of South America, so that it may almost be 
considered to be a connecting link between the two families. A 
forest rat is said to have once abounded on the islands, and to 
have been used for food by the natives ; but there is much doubt 
as to what it really was, and whether it was not an introduced 
species. The seals are wide-spread antarctic forms which have 
no geographical significance. 
Birds.—About 145 species of birds are natives of New Zealand, 
of which 88 are waders or aquatics, leaving 57 land-birds belong- 
