98 A FOSSIL CONTINENT 



approach the lizard-tailed birds of the oolite or the toothed 

 birds of the cretaceous period as do these Australian and 

 New Zealand emus and apteryxes. Again, while many 

 characteristic Oriental families are quite absent, like the 

 vultures, woodpeckers, pheasants and bulbuls, the Austra- 

 lian region has many other fairly ancient birds, found no- 

 where else on the surface of our modern planet. Such 

 are the so-called brush turkeys and mound builders, the 

 only feathered things that never sit upon their own eggs, 

 but allow them to be hatched, after the fashion of reptiles, 

 by the heat of the sand or of fermenting vegetable matter. 

 The piping crows, the honeysuckers, the lyre-birds, and 

 the more-porks are all peculiar to the Australian region. 

 So are the wonderful and aesthetic bower-birds. Brush- 

 tongued lories, black cockatoos, and gorgeously coloured 

 pigeons, though somewhat less antique, perhaps, in type, 

 give a special character to the bird-life of the country. 

 And in New Guinea, an isolated bit of the same old con- 

 tinent, the birds of paradise, found nowhere else in the 

 whole world, seem to recall some forgotten Eden of the 

 remote past, some golden age of Saturnian splendour. 

 Poetry apart, into which I have dropped for a moment like 

 Mr. Silas Wegg, the birds of paradise are, in fact, gor- 

 geously dressed crows, specially adapted to forest life in a 

 rich fruit -bearing tropical country, where food is abundant 

 and enemies unknown. 



Last of all, a certain small number of modern mammals 

 have passed over to Australia at various times by pure 

 chance. They fall into two classes the rats and mice, who 

 doubtless got transported across on floating logs or balks 

 of timber ; and the human importations, including the dog, 

 who came, perhaps on their, owners' canoes, perhaps on the 

 wreck and debris of inundations. Yet even in these cases 

 again, Australia still maintains its proud pre-eminence as 



