LIFE OF THE AUSTRALIAN REGION. 465 



species. Barbels are common to the Palsearctic region, as are the 

 Mountain Barbels (Schizothorax). The Siluroid genera Clarias and 

 Heterobranchus are common to Africa and India. The genus Syni- 

 branchus is common to India and tropical America. 



Australian Region The Australian region is limited to the north 

 by " Wallace's line," a strait 15 miles wide. The mammals are chiefly 

 found in Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, and neighbouring islands. 

 They are mostly marsupials and monotremes, with bats and small 

 rodents. The monotremes comprise the Platypus, Echidna, and 

 Trachyglossus. The marsupials are almost limited to this region. 

 They parallel most of the orders of placcntal mammals the wombat, 

 Phascolomys, representing the Rodents, the Bandicoot Perameles and 

 Myrmecobius being Insectivores ; the grass-eaters being paralleled by 

 kangaroos and kangaroo-rats ; while the Tasmanian types, Thylacinus 

 and /Sarcophilus, with Dasyurus, represent carnivora; and the Pla- 

 langers and Phascolarctos have been termed marsupial monkeys. 

 Among birds there are nearly twenty families peculiar to the region. 

 These include honeysuckers, thickheaded shrikes, caterpillar-eaters, 

 flower-peckers, and swallow-flycatchers ; while the weaver birds, more- 

 porks, kingfishers, and pigeons attain their maximum development in 

 the province. There are many Ratitse. Birds of paradise are found in 

 the Papuan and Moluccan areas. In Australia are many parrots, bower 

 birds, lyre birds ; while the New Zealand region is chiefly remarkable 

 for its living kiwi and extinct moas. The Australian lizards include 

 the frilled lizard Chlamydosaurus, and the species of Moloch, which 

 closely resemble Phrynosoma, the horned lizard of Mexico. The 

 Hatteria is distinctive of New Zealand. The fishes are few, mostly 

 of Indian types in the tropical area, with Ceratodus for the most 

 interesting of its genera. In the south there are no fishes in the Cod 

 family, while New Zealand has 6 genera. 



Method of Palseontological Work. Dumont, one of the greatest 

 of physical geologists of the last generation, had a strong belief that 

 palaeontology was superfluous for geological work. It may be that it 

 has sometimes been used with too much dogmatism and too little 

 learning, but it is as certainly a science as physical geology, and 

 absolutely inseparable from it. Every induction of palseontology is 

 based upon evidence from the purely physical conditions of strata. 

 Thus we meet with the genus Cyprina in the Lower Greensand, 

 represented say by the species Cyprina angulata ; we find it again 

 in the Thanet sands, represented by Cyprina Morrisi and Cyprina 

 planata, though these range on into the London clay ; we meet with 

 it next in the Cyprina Islandica of the crag, which is also a sandy 

 deposit ; and we find this species widely distributed in the seas of 

 the north of Europe and North America, so that we are justified in 

 inferring that Cyprina has always lived along a line of coast, and pro- 

 bably in water of no great depth. But although we may examine 

 every genus in this way, and compare the species so as to satisfy 

 ourselves concerning their descent from each other, and to determine 

 the physical conditions under which they lived, the chief business of 



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