GEOGKAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 321 
III. Zhe Neotropical Region completes the great division 
(Notogxa) proposed by Prof. Huxley. It presents certain alliances 
to the Australian, and some to New Zealand ; but these are-of a 
different 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. Asa matter of fact the resemblance lies rather 
in the comparatively low rank (morphologically speaking) 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 afforded 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 the 
Australian Musewm 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 Descriptive 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 
Centralpolynesiens 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 Molucche by Count T. Salvadori (Torino: 
1880-82), with its Aggiwnte (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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