January 



900] 



NATURE 



247 



two families of raft-breasted birds, Diitoniilhidae and Aptcry- 

 gidae, which are so essentially distinct in structure that they are 

 probably not even distantly related to one another, but have 

 arisen quite independently, and no representatives of these 

 families have been found in any other country. (The supposed 

 finding of Dinoniis and Apteryx remains by Mr. De \'is in 

 Queensland, having been discussed by Captain Hutton and Mr. 

 Lydekker, is now considered to have been a mistake. ) 



As regards the reptiles, we have the well-known and peculiar 

 Tuatara {Haiteria punctata) and a number of lizards, which 

 Messrs. A. H. S. Lucas and C. Frost have recently revised, and 

 they tell us that the New Zealand forms are not related to those 

 of Australia (Trans. New Zealand Institute, vol. xxix. p. 264). 



The land and fresh -water molluscs have been critically revised 

 by Mr. li. Suter ; and Mr. H. Crosse, in his introductory note 

 to Mr. Suter's paper, summarises his conclusions thus : — " Les 

 faunes malacologiques Australienne et Neo-Zelandaise sont, 

 d'ailleurs, a premiere vue, fort differentes Tune de Tautre, et 

 elles prcsentent souvent des caracteres opposes. . . . I'2n realite, 

 les Mollusques terrestres et fluviatiles de la Nouvelle-Zclande, 

 et nous comprenons sous cette denomination, non seulement les 

 deux grandes iies du Nord et du Sud, niais encore les iles 

 Stewart, Auckland, Campbell, et Kermadec, forment un en- 

 semble d'especes tres particulieres, toutes, ou a peu pres toutes, 

 indigenes, et constituant une faune locale, insulaire et parfaite- 

 ment caracaterisee. 



" Pourtant, a notre avis, il existe un archipel, dans la faune 

 duquel, si originale qu'elle soit, on trouve des afifinites marquees 

 €t des rapports incontestablesaveccelle de la Nouvelle-Zelande : 

 c'est la Nouvelle-Caledonie " {Jottrnal de Conchyliologic, 1894, 

 vol. xli. pp. 215, 216). 



Mr. C. Iledley has also pointed out that the land molluscan 

 fauna of New Zealand is quite distinct from that of Australia, 

 and has affinities rather with the faunas of Lord Howe Island, 

 New Caledonia, Fiji, the New Hebrides, and Solomon Islands 

 {Records Australian Museum, vol. i. No. 7, 1891 ; Proc. Linn. 

 Soc. N.S.W., 1892 (2), vol. vii. p. 335 ; Ann. and Mag. Nat. 

 Hist.., 1893 ^6), vol. xi. p. 435). This is indeed significant, 

 especially when the form of the ' ' New Zealand Plateau " and 

 the ocean-floor beyond is taken into consideration. 



As regards the earthworms. Dr. Benham tells us that they 

 " are very different from those of Australia, on the one hand, 

 and Europe on the other" (Canterbury Weekly Pi ess, May 3, 

 1899). I cannot, however, agree with Dr. Benham when he 

 reasons that because species of one genus — Acanthodrilus — 

 which is widely spread in other southern lands, are found in 

 New Zealand and Queensland there must have been at one 

 time a land connection between New Zealand and north-eastern 

 Australia. There is another explanation which appears to 

 accord better with the distribution of other groups, if a land 

 connection is necessary. Far back in Cretaceous or tarly 

 Tertiary times (Cretaceo-Tertiary of N.Z. geologists) before the 

 north-eastern part of Australia had received its mamnial fauna, 

 the New Zealand area may have been connected with New 

 Ouinea t/w Lord Howe Island, New Caledonia, the New 

 Hebrides, and the .Solomon Islands ; or more probably these 

 islands were then connected with New Guinea and the main 

 land, and afterwards when the land connection was broken up, 

 some of them became connected with New Zealand, so that a 

 few of the plants and animals which spread into Australia or 

 northwards into New Guinea were also able to reach New 

 Zealand. This is not a new suggestion ; it has been proposed 

 by Captain Hutton and others. Mr. H. Deane, in his presi- 

 -dential address, delivered before the Linnean Society of New 

 South Wales, March 31, 1897, .said :— " The difiiculties are too 

 great in the way of such a supposition (a Pacific continent), but 

 •only connections similar to that which we are certain existed 

 between New Zealand, New Caledonia, the Fijis and the main 

 land which was perhaps at its period of greatest development 

 in a state of oscillation need be conceded." Regarding the 

 alpine flora of the Owen Stanley Range in New Guinea, the 

 iale Baron Sir F. von Mueller, after enumerating a number of 

 extra-tropical genera found there, said: "Many of these 

 approach in their affinity to forms familiar to us in Europe, a 

 few even being identical with British species, and appear thus 

 to reach in New Guinea their most southern geographic limits. 

 But, on the other hand, many of these Papuan highland plants 

 are of far .southern type, such as Drimys, Drapetes, Donatia, 

 Styphelia, Phyllocladus, Liberlia, Carpha, Oreobolus, Gahnia, 



Dawsonia ; indeed, some of the species are absolutely the same 

 as congeners of the Australiaii^ and New Zealand Alps" (Proc. 

 Roy. Geographical Soc, Australia, Queensland Branch, vol. v, 

 p 20, i88q). But without the nece.ssity of a land connection, 

 when in Tertiary times the New Zealand land area extended as 

 far as Lord Howe Island, and perhaps New Caledonia, a few 

 earthworms and other animals may have been carried across 

 the intervening comparatively narrow sea by birds and on 

 floating timber. 



New Zealand insects have been much neglected, and some 

 groups have hardly been touched. The Coccids, however, have 

 been admirably worked up by the late Mr. W. M. Maskell, so 

 that a comparison is possible. When we add to Maskell's 

 "Synoptical List of Coccids" the forms described in his three 

 subsequent papers ( Trans. N.Z. Inst., vols, xxviii. , xxix., xxx.), 

 and summarise the results, we find that of the 105 species and 

 varieties which have been found in New Zealand, 78 (74 per 

 cent.) appear to be endemic. Of the remaining 27 forms, 13 

 occur also in Australia. These 13 are widely ranging forms 

 which have been found in other countries — North America, 

 Europe, &c., and occur in New Zealand in greenhouses, and 

 on introduced plants. 



Most of them have no doubt been recently introduced 

 to both Australia and New Zealand. Two or three, such as 

 Jcerya purchasi, may have originally come from Australia. 

 Coccids often multiply and spread very rapidly when introduced 

 to a country where the conditions are favourable to them. The 

 number of forms peculiar to Australia is 202. As regards the 

 distribution of the genera, twenty-three have been found in 

 New Zealand, of which only two are peculiar to that country ; 

 two of them have been found in other countries but not in 

 Australia ; and two occur in New Zealand and Australia, but 

 not elsewhere. These latter are Ctenochiton with eleven 

 species in New Zealand and two in Australia, and Coelostovia 

 with five species in New Zealand and three in Australia. 

 This would seem to indicate that New Zealand was the 

 original home of both. The remaining seventeen genera occur 

 in Australia and other countries, most of them being cosmo- 

 politan or almost so. Of the ten genera which have been 

 found, so far, only in Australia, four belong to the sub-family 

 Brachyscelinae, which is essentially Australian, four of its 

 five genera, and forty-five species, being found only in Aus- 

 tralia, and not one representative of this sub-fannly occurs in 

 New Zealand. It has often been pointed out that the animals 

 and plants characteristic of Australia are absent from New 

 Zealand, and those of New Zealand from Australia. 



A large number of beetles have been described by Capt. 

 Brown ("Manual of New Zealand Coleoptera ") ; Mr. A. T. 

 Urquhart and others have described many spiders in the Trans- 

 actions of the New Zealand Institute ; and Mr. R. W. Fereday 

 has enumerated 617 species of lepidotera in the same publica- 

 tion (vol. xxx. p. 326). When these and the other groups come 

 to be revised, and disentangled, and their affinities worked out, 

 it may be reasonably supposed that the results will accord with 

 what has already been done. 



In view of the above facts it is clear that not only is it not 

 " probable that the whole of the fauna of New Zealand has been 

 originally derived from that source " (Australia), but that only a 

 small and insignificant portion came thence ; that the New 

 /Zealand terrestrial fauna, as a whole, is essentially distinct from 

 all others ; and that its alliance with the fauna of Australia is 

 extremely slight. As far back as 1880 Captain Hutton pointed 

 out that, " The better the fauna of New Zealand becomes known, 

 the more prominently does it stand out distinct from that of any 

 other country" ("Manual of N.Z. Mollusca," p. 2). 



In discussing the affinities of the New Zealand fauna it is fair 

 only to consider those groups which have been revised, for many 

 animals have been recently introduced from Australia, and rapid 

 changes have been going on since settlement began in New 

 Zealand and the Australian Colonies. ALso in former times 

 collections often got mixed ; naturalists and collectors were not 

 very particular about localities, for they did not then know the 

 immense importance and interest attaching to the distribution of 

 species. 



The paucity of New Zealand insects is not' by any means so 

 great as has been represented. The reason that .so few species 

 have been described in many groups is largely due to the fact 

 that they have been neglected by New Zealand naturalists, rather 

 than that there are few to be found. A diligent worker here 



NO. 1576, VOL. 61] 



