ON CEEATION OR EVOLUTION. 185 



of fauna to a peculiar soil and climate speaks fully as plainly 

 in favour of design, as of an independent centre of evolution. 

 In passing a reference may be made to the monotremata. 

 These " animated fossils," so-called, are of great use to the 

 evolutionist builder of the family tree of man. They figure 

 among certain important links in the chain from the inverte- 

 brata to man, and, being oviparous mammals, are of peculiar 

 value to the diagrammatic method, ranking in point of impor- 

 tance with lemurs, insectivora, and the honoured amphioxus. 

 They did not need to be invented, as did certain of Professor 

 Haeckel's links formerly, for two genera of them do actually 

 exist. Here is a remarkal)le little group, ancestors of man, 

 not known anywhere except on a great continental island, 

 which probably from its origin w^as disconnected from the 

 rest of the land, and not know^n palseontologically. except 

 for one species of echidna in Australia itself, in lote Tertiary 

 times ; and yet this group is to rank as an important link in 

 the ancestry of man! The results of human experiments 

 illustrate by contrast the wisdom which has regulated the 

 fauna and flora of New Zealand and Australia. A few 

 instances may be mentioned, quoted partly from a paper 

 by the Rev. Theodore Wood.* Thirty- six years ago a few 

 rabbits were introduced into Australia, by way of experi- 

 ment, with that disastrous result which is now an old story 

 in Australia. It is said that after this experiment, in one 

 season, 1^80, twenty millions of skins of rabbits were 

 exported; that on one estate eighteen poisoners were 

 kept daily and constantly at work ; that £400,000 was 

 paid in New South Wales alone as " head-money," and 

 all in vain. In New Zealand the sparrow was imported 

 from Europe with similarly grievous results. In the case 

 of plants, the water-cress was introduced into New Zealand 

 by certain persons with sufficiently innocent intentions, but 

 Avith the result of producing in ten years Brobdingnagian 

 weeds, with stems as thick as a man's wrist, and leaves as 

 large as a water-lily, blocking up the streams and ditches. 

 A Scotchman of patriotic mind plants a single thistle in 

 Australia ; in a few years the weed has grown so alarmingly 

 that his neighbours rise up and call him — well — not blessed. 

 And as with the sweet-briar, a harmless enough plant in its 

 English and appropriate home, but one wdiicli in Australia 

 soon becomes such a pest that farmers are dragging it from 



* Oa the Australian Mammals, Victoria Institute, AjJiii 13, 1896. 



