10 DISTRIBUTION OF QUEENSLAND GASTEROPODA. 



of supposed species, the two faunas will show still more 

 striking points of agreement. 



The only inference to be drawn from this remarkable 

 similarity in marine life is that, however much the areas 

 of the intervening islands may have been extended or 

 diminished in the successive geological epochs, between 

 Queensland and the Philippines an open sea has been main- 

 tained through a vast series of years. 



Wallace, when accounting for the differences in animal 

 life of the land faunas of the various East Indian Islands, 

 sheds some light on the question under discussion in the 

 following statement : — " Beginning in late Miocene times, 

 when the deposits on the south-east coast of Java were 

 upraised, we suppose a general elevation of the whole of 

 the extremely shallow seas uniting what are now Sumatra, 

 Java, Borneo, and the Philippines with the Asiatic con- 

 tinent, and forming that extended equatorial area in which 

 the typical Malayan fauna was developed. After a long 

 period of stability, giving ample time for the specialisation 

 of so many peculiar types, the Philippines were first separated, 

 then at a considerably later period, Java ; a little later, 

 Sumatra and Borneo ; and finally the islands south of 

 Singapore to Banca and Billiton." 



In other directions the same conclusions must be made. 

 As the islands of Melanesia and Polynesia come under 

 European influence and their molluscan life is made known, 

 the astonishing range of species found on our shores is 

 extended. Of 487 species or marked varieties collected 

 by Mr. C. Hedley at Funafuti, one of the Ellice Islands, 

 no less than 261 also inhabit Queensland; and a definite, 

 but decreasing relationship is shown as we study the marine 

 shells of New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, the Paumotus 

 and the Sandwich Islands. 



Darwin,* in his "Voyage of a Naturalist," states that 

 of 90 shells collected by Cummings at the Galapagos, 25 

 are found on the west coast of South America, and 18 are 

 natives of the Low Archipelago or of the Philippines. The 

 Galapagos group therefore marks the junction between the 

 Western South American and Indo- Pacific provinces ; the 



*Sir John Lubbock's Edition, p. 285. 



