Fauna and Flora of New Zealand. 447 
tralia was formed. During the Lower Cretaceous period a 
large Pacific continent extended from New Guinea to Chili, 
sending south from the neighbourhood of Fiji a peninsula 
that included New Zealand. Nearly all the southern part 
of America was submerged. Western Australia and Eastern 
Australia formed two large islands lying at some distance 
from the continent. This continent supported dicotyledonous 
and other plants, insects, land shells, frogs, a few lizards, and 
perhaps snakes and a few birds, but no mammals. In the 
Upper Cretaceous period New Zealand became separated and 
reduced to two small islands; the South-Pacific continent 
divided in the middle between Samoa and the Society Islands, 
and (the eastern portion being elevated while the centre sank) 
it ultimately became what we know now as Chili, La Plata, 
and Patagonia. In the Hocene period elevation commenced 
in our district; Eastern Australia was joined to New Guinea, 
which stretched through New Britain to the Solomon Islands, 
New Zealand was also upheaved and extended towards New 
Caledonia, but the two lands were divided by an arm of the 
sea. ‘The mainland of ‘New Guinea had by this time been 
invaded from the north by a large number of plants, birds, 
lizards, snakes, &c., which migrated south into Eastern Aus- 
tralia, and a few passed over the New-Caledonia channel and 
reached New Zealand. Butstill nomammals. In the Oligo- 
cene period New Zealand again gradually sank, carrying with 
it the sparse flora and fauna it had received, and in Miocene 
times was reduced to a cluster of islands, Eastern Australia 
all this time receiving constant additions to its fauna and 
flora through New Guinea. Jn the Pliocene period elevation 
once more took place; New Zealand extended towards the 
Kermadec Islands, and the continent of Australia was formed ; 
after which subsidence again occurred in the New-Zealand 
area. 
These conclusions are more precise, but are much the same 
as those at which I arrived in 1872, with the exception 
that I now substitute a South-Pacific continent from which 
Australia was isolated, for the Lower Cretaceous Antarctic 
continent of my former paper. Mr. Wallace’s hypothesis of 
an isolated West-Australian continent on which the charac- 
teristic Australian flora and mammalian fauna were developed 
is fairly satisfactory, but I presume that the Australian birds 
are not supposed to belong to the West-Australian fauna. A 
few, such as the ancestors of the honey-suckers and the brush- 
tongued parrots, may have crossed over the sea from New 
Guinea to Western Australia, but the mass of the birds are 
supposed to be Kast-Australian, to have passed into West 
