284. JOSHUA RUTLAND, ESQ., ON 
establishment of the Maori-speaking people in Madagascar, 
their appearance in the Pacific, and the erecting of the 
Polynesian monuments; but to a people who have Teft such 
traces behind them a place amongst the leading nations of 
antiquity must assuredly be accorded. 
DIscusstIon. 
The CuatrmMan.—We shall be glad to hear remarks on this 
interesting paper, which is certainly of great importance. 
The Secretary.—I would just like to say a word in reference to 
one particular part of this paper, which the Chairman has justly 
entitled one of great importance. 
It shows a large amount of research in the country with which 
I think Mr. Rutland is, to a certain extent, personally acquainted. 
But it refers to the evidence adduced from the distribution of 
certain plants over a large portion of those islands, and it scems 
to me that he has not taken into consideration (perhaps the idea 
has never presented itself to him), that plant and animal distri- 
bution is not, necessarily, to be accounted for by the agency of 
man, or the inhabitants of certain portions of the world; but that 
it is the result of physical conditions—in the distribution of land 
and ocean, which were in force at a period not so very far back, 
in the history of the world—possibly within the human period ; 
but in any case not very much before the human period. Now 
observations that have been carried on by geographers, and I 
might say geologists, and also by such eminent naturalists as 
Dr. Wallace, whose name has been referred to in the paper, have 
shown that plants and animals have had a wide distribution for 
which it is impossible to account on the hypothesis that the 
relative positions of land and sea are now exactly what they were 
at a period preceding that of the human population. Very great 
changes in this distribution have taken place unquestionably 
within the late Tertiary and even the Post-Tertiary Period; 
and therefore plants and even animals, such as the pig (which is 
evidently an animal which has had wide distribution) may be the 
survivors of those which were extensively distributed throughout 
the Pacific Ocean and the Southern Ocean at a period just 
