The Lost Continent 379 



While on the subject of geographical distribution of 

 animals, I should like to add a word or two with regard to 

 an aspect of the subject which is intensely interesting. 

 Dr. H. O. Forbes, the celebrated Malayan traveller, now 

 the Director of Museums in Liverpool, was some years 

 ago the Director of the Museum at Christchurch in New 

 Zealand. When there, he paid a visit to the Chatham 

 Islands, and obtained the sub-fossil remains of a flight- 

 less Rail (Aphanapteryx hawkinsi) of the same genus as 

 the extinct flightless Rail of Mauritius. In the neigh- 

 bouring island of Rodriguez formerly existed a Wood-hen 

 (Erythromachns), closely allied to the Weka Rails or 

 Wood- Hens of New Zealand (Ocydromus). The latter birds 

 will to this day fight at anything red which is offered to 

 them, and the same fact is recorded by Leguat of the Wood- 

 hen of Rodriguez, which has been named Erythromachus 

 or the " fighter of red " in consequence. In New Zealand 

 existed within historical times the gigantic Moas, to which 

 the extinct yEpyornis of Madagascar was nearly akin, while 

 large Coots (Fulica), apparently identical, formerly lived in 

 the Chatham Islands and Mauritius. Another connection 

 between the Mascarene Region and the New Zealand 

 Region is seen in the Passerine Birds, where the Huia 

 (p. 112) of New Zealand is clearly a close ally of the extinct 

 Fregilupus of Reunion. 



The presence of these closely allied forms in such 

 distant portions of the world is an argument in favour 

 of a former connection between these land-areas, now 

 separated by deep seas, and Dr. Forbes has brought for- 

 ward a mass of evidence to show that there was probably 

 not only a land-connection between these southern portions 

 of the globe, but that, when the South Pole was tropical, 

 the land extended over a vast area in the southern portion 

 of the globe, and that a continuation of land existed which 

 connected the now " Lost Continent " with South America, 



