390 ZOOLOGICAL GEOGRAPHY. [part hi. 



Hebrides have rather an uncertain position, and it is difficult 

 to decide whether to class them with the Austro-Malay Islands, 

 the Pacific Islands, "or Australia. The. islands of the west Pacific, 

 north of the equator, also probably come into this region, 

 although the Ladrone Islands may belong to the Philippines ; 

 but as the fauna of all these small islets is very scanty, and 

 very little known, they are not at present of much importance. 



There remains the islands of New Zealand, with the surround- 

 ing small islands, as far as the Auckland, Chatham, and Nor- 

 folk Islands. These are situated in the south temperate 

 forest-zone. They are mountainous, and have a moist, equable, 

 and temperate climate. They are true oceanic islands, and the 

 total absence of mammalia intimates that they have not been 

 connected with Australia or any other continent in recent geolo- 

 gical times. The general character of their zoology, no less 

 than their botany, affiliates them however, to Australia as por- 

 tions of the same zoological region. 



General Zoological Characteristics of the Australian Region. — 

 For the purpose of giving an idea of the very peculiar and 

 striking features which characterise the Australian region, it 

 will be as well at first to confine ourselves to the great central 

 land masses of Australia and New Guinea, where those features 

 are manifested in their greatest force and purity, leaving the 

 various peculiarities and anomalies of the outlying islands to be 

 dealt with subsequently. 



Mammalia. — The Australian region is broadly distinguished 

 froni all the rest of the globe by the entire absence of all the 

 orders of non-aquatic mammalia that abound in the Old 

 World, except two — the winged bats (Chiroptera), and the equally 

 cosmopolite roderijts (Ptodentia). Of these latter however, only 

 one family is represented — the Muridse — (comprising the rats 

 and mice), and the Australian representatives of these are all of 

 small or moderate size — a suggestive fact in appreciating the true 

 character of the Australian fauna. In place of the Quadrumana, 

 Carnivora, and Ungulates, which abound in endless variety 

 in all the other regions under equally favourable conditions, 

 Australia possesses two new orders (or perhaps sub-classes) — 



