Geographical Distributio7i. 205 



the inhabitants should form, as it were, little worlds of 

 their own, more or less unlike the inhabitants of any 

 other parts of the globe. And next, that some of 

 these inhabitants should present us with independent 

 information touching archaic forms of life. For it is 

 manifestly most improbable that the course of evo- 

 lutionary history should have run exactly parallel in 

 the case of these isolated oceanic continents and in 

 continents elsewhere. Australia and New Zealand, 

 therefore, ought to present a very large number, not 

 only of peculiar species and genera, but even of 

 families, and possibly of orders. Now this is just 

 what Australia and New Zealand do present. The 

 case of the dog being doubtful, there is an absence of 

 all mammalian life, except that of one of the oldest 

 and least highly developed orders, the Marsupials. 

 There even occurs a unique order, still lower in the 

 scale of organization — so low, in fact, that it deserves 

 to be regarded as but nascent mammalian : I mean, 

 of course, the Monotremata. As regards Birds, we 

 have the peculiar wingless forms alluded to in a 

 previous chapter (viz. that on Morphology) ; and, with- 

 out waiting to go into details, it is notorious that the 

 faunas of Australia and New Zealand are not only 

 highly peculiar, but also suggestively archaic. Therefore, 

 in both the respects above mentioned, the anticipations 

 of our theory are fully borne out. But as it would 

 take too long to consider, even cursorily, the faunas 

 and floras of these immense islands, I here allude to 

 them only for the sake of illustration. In order to 

 present the argument from geographical distribution 

 within reasonable limits, I think it is best to restrict 

 our examination to smaller areas ; for these will better 



