192 



THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE 

 MOTHS OF THE SUBFAMILY BISTONINAE. 



J. W. HESLOP HARRISON, D,Sc. 



{Conttmied from page fSg). 



I 

 XVIIL— THE GENUS LOPHODES (GUENEE). 



Lophodes sinistraria (Guenee). Distribution : — South East 

 Australia and Tasmania. 



The distribution of the Bistonincs has, in its study, raised 

 a crowd of more or less difficult problems of extreme interest, 

 but none are more attractive than the appearance of Lophodes 

 sinistraria in Australia and Tasmania. Its occurrence in the 

 Island Continent brings up a host of questions as to the origin 

 of the Flora and Fauna of the Australian and New Zealand 

 subregions. 



Both plants and animals of the two areas show signs of 

 long isolation from the rest of the world. In fact, no country- 

 has been separated from other quarters of the globe longer 

 than New Zealand as the continued survival of those curious 

 birds of the Ratite families, the Immanes (the Moas) and the 

 Apteryges (the Kiwis) and the complete absence of mammals 

 suggest ; these features betoken a lack of constant or reliable 

 communications with the outer world for periods appalhng 

 in their length, for they thrust us back into Secondary Times. 



Nor in Australia are things much better ; whilst it shows 

 signs in its more lowly forms of an interchange of living beings 

 with New Zealand, the peculiarities of its restricted Fauna 

 and Flora, its marsupials, its weird looking monotremes of the 

 families Ornithorhynchidcs and EchidnidcB, the persistence of 

 its unique Ceratodus amongst those primitive fishes the Ganoids, 

 its anomalous birds of the groups Casuariidce (the Cassowaries), 

 the Dromceidce (the Emeus), Cactiatidce (the Cockatoos), its 

 plant orders and suborders, like the Goodenoughiacece and 

 BoroniecB, all contrive to give us a picture of long separation 

 and non-interference from outside sources. 



When, however, any assemblages of undeniably southern 

 tendencies like those birds of the sub-class Ratitce, the Ostrich 

 {Struthio camelus), the Rhea {Rhea americana), the genera 

 Xyleutes, Diptychophora, and Heliostibes amongst the lepidop- 

 tera, the orders MyrohalanacecB and Stylidiacece of flowering 

 plants, showing unmistakable alhances with forms typically 

 Australian, do crop elsewhere, they combine to demonstrate 

 that there were, at some remote period, far-flung connections 

 with lands beyond, but that the land-bridges lay in directions 

 with which modern geography has no concern. They refer us 

 to the days when the old Gondwanaland or its greater form the 



Naturalistr 



