THE AUSTRALIAN REGION 47 



former arms stretched upwards and embraced New 

 Zealand, Eastern Australia, Tasmania, Madagascar, the 

 Mascarene Islands, and part of South America. The 

 grounds for this bold assumption, which, although by no 

 means new, has not been previously developed to so great 

 an extent, rest chiefly on the finding of the remains of a 

 large ocydromine rail in the Chatham Islands, allied to 

 the now extinct Aphanapteryx of Mauritius, and the fossil 

 bones of a large coot (Fulica) allied to F. newtoni of the 

 same island. Other evidence adduced is that of the 

 occurrence of the Ratitw, or Struthious birds, in New 

 Zealand, Australia, Madagascar, and Patagonia. But the 

 distribution of Struthious birds is probably to be explained 

 much in the same way as the distribution of other archaic 

 forms, such as the lemurs and tapirs. They are remnants 

 of what were formerly widely spread groups. That this 

 is likely to be the case is shown by the recent discovery, 

 in other parts of the world (such as the Sewaliks of India, 

 and the Eocenes of England and France) of the remains 

 of other extinct Ratite birds. 



Another piece of evidence brought forward by Dr. 

 Forbes is the occurrence of Didanculus in the Samoan 

 group, and of the Dodo (Didus), to which Diduncidus was 

 once supposed to be nearly related, in Mauritius. But it 

 is now allowed that Diduncidus has little near affinity to 

 the Dodo, and that it is in fact a mere strongly modified 

 member of the family Columbidse. 



Mauritius, as a matter of fact, is in every way a typical 

 oceanic island, and there seems to be little evidence, either 

 physical or zoological, of its having been ever connected 

 with any other land. 



