22 Transact ioiis. — Miscellaneous. 



from tlie nearest portion of the ancient land, as Madagascar remained, no 

 doubt, also for long ages, the happy home of the JEpyornh after Lemuria 

 went down. 



But if ignoring these considerations which seem to make the history of 

 New Zealand certain, as that of the other large insular countries mentioned, 

 and all the many old islands of the sea, to whose venerable story Mr. "Wallace 

 says, fearlessly, their inhabitants give us the key ; if disregarding the 

 absence of all evidence of its ever having been covered with an ice-cap, and 

 that there is no possible reason for alleging it to be a logical conclusion 

 that it must have been so covered, the glacial enthusiasts will risk their 

 belief in all things else, so long as they can picture to their minds this 

 island in the sea of ice, where all was war and carnage ; if, instead of the 

 moas being the long descended representatives of a royal race of birds, 

 come from one of the most ancient aboriginal families upon earth, they 

 deem them mere creatures of yesterday, modern adventurers, it is clear that 

 they must be prepared to admit that their advancement must have been 

 most improperly rapid. 



Their lacertiiian forefathers, and theirs before them, must have been 

 addicted to saltatory practices more daring than those of our ^)/-or«/ American 

 cousin, that strange Mexican batrachian the irrepressible axolotl ; and 

 have set at defiance the old established laws of slow progressive develop- 

 ment followed in all other epochs, as laid down emphatically in the Theory 

 of Descent, endangering the foundations of that edifice, so far as im- 

 measurable time is requisite for the safety of its construction. 



Their advance in life must have been far more i)recipitate than that 

 made by the inhabitants of the Gallapagos, where the frogs or allied 

 batrachian patriarchs have no nobler descendants than the lizard nnd 

 the tortoise, and yet these families can probably trace their descent from 

 ancestors of fair standing in the world, when they first landed on the 

 scarce cooled lavas. Gay sea-going lacertiaus, and slumbering chelonians 

 on some floating log may have reached their shores, and from their eggs 

 came the few four-footed creatures domiciled in these islands, amongst 

 them the little altered descendant of one of them, nearly the last of its 

 race, the only marine lizard now known. The ocean depths may how- 

 ever be tenanted still by forms of life we little imagine. Or, notwithstand- 

 ing the antipathy the batrachian race evince to being cooped up in isolated 

 regions, the Gallapagos population may have a more ancient local pedigree, 

 and be descended from the survivors of a shower of young frogs. The 

 distance is not too great to suppose the possibility of their having been 

 caught up in some strong revolving storm from an American pool and 

 cari-ied thus far ; it is not long since a number of these creatures were 



