GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 315 
evidence which is from one point of view so evidently deficient may 
not be supplied by enquiry into existing Avifaunx, and this signifies 
that.a knowledge of the Geographical Distribution of living or recently 
extinct Birds becomes a matter of prime importance to every one 
who would exercise intelligently the calling of an Ornithologist. 
Of the six Regions above adopted it seems fitting to begin with 
that in the Fauna of which Birds play the principal part, since of 
indigenous terrestrial Mammals it has none,! and that Class is 
represented only by Bats or Seals. 
I. The New-Zealand Region presents, in Mr. Wallace’s words 
(Island Life, p. 442), “the most remarkable and interesting of insular 
Faunas,” and leads to the inference that this portion of the globe 
shews a longer period of isolation than any other of equal magni- 
tude—an isolation possibly anterior to the time when terrestrial 
Mammals first appeared, or at least appeared in any land which 
could have been then connected with it. Beside the two large 
islands and one of moderate size (Stewart’s), known in the aggre- 
gate as New Zealand, numerous satellites belong to the Region, as 
Lord Howe’s, Norfolk and Kermadoe Islands, with the Chatham, 
Auckland, and Macquarrie groups, as well as Antipodes Island. It 
possessed until recently two perfectly distinct Orders (or, as some 
rank them, Families) of Ratttx—the Immanes? (Moa) and Apteryges 
(Krw1), of which the latter still exists, while the former, now 
extinct, contained, according to the latest revision by Mr. Lydekker 
(Cat. Foss. B. Br. Mus. pp. 219-351), about a score of species that 
may require 5 genera for their reception, and certainly exhibit no 
inconsiderable modification of a tolerably uniform structure, while 
some of their members reached a stature that may be almost called 
colossal. Moreover, these two Orders seem to be absolutely peculiar 
to the Region.® 
Turning to the Carinatx, we have a very remarkable genus in 
Ocydromus (WEKA) which, Ralline as it is, affords in the loss of its 
power of flight and corresponding structural modification evidence 
of considerable antiquity. The Limicolex present a quite unique 
form in the highly specialized Anarhynchus (WRYBILL), and the 
Anseres in Cnemiornis, a large flightless Goose, now extinct and 
apparently allied to the Australian CEREOPSIS, while the Accipitres 
shew Harpagornis, a bird half as big again as an Eagle, and stout 
enough to make Moas its prey—indeed it possibly owes its ex- 
tinction to their disappearance, finding no fit quarry when they and 
Cnemiornis were gone. Sceloglaua is a very peculiar genus of Striges 
1 See above (p. 224, note 1). 
2 Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 4, xx. p. 400. 
3 Positive assertion to this effect cannot be made, since a portion of a fossil 
femur from Queensland, said to appear indistinguishable from Dinornis, has been 
described and figured (Proc. R. Soc. Queensi. i. p. 27, pis. iit. iv.) 
