ZOOLOGY OF AUSTRALIA: 
BY THE 
HON. W. MACLEAY, M.L.C. 
[Read April 14, 1885.] 
EEE 
Tue Fauna of Australia is, taking the Animal Kingdom as a 
whole, extremely rich and varied; it is also more distinctively 
Jocal in its general character than that of any other large area 
of the earth’s surface. But, though the strictly Australian 
character exists throughout, the Fauna varies considerably in 
different parts of the country, the variations being evidently 
caused in some instances by differences in soil and climate, and 
in others by contiguity to other Zoological regions. 
Those which are produced by soil and climate alone,—such, 
for instance, as the marked difference in the Fauna of the East 
Coast Districts and the huge basin of the interior west of the 
Coast range,--are evidently mere changes in the indigenous 
Fauna, brought about by the instrumentality of these causes 
exercised over an immense period of time ; while the still more 
marked distinctions between the Zoological productions of the 
southern and temperate regions of Australia and the tropical 
northern parts, though, no doubt, also much influenced by 
climate, may also be traced to the vicinity of the Indo-Malayan 
islands and seas, from which, undoubtedly, many of the 
North Australian Birds, Butterflies, Fishes, &c. have been 
derived. Wallace, in his great work on “The Geographical 
Distribution of Animals,” divides his Australian Region into— 
1, The Austro-Malayan; 2, The Australian; 3, The Poly- 
nesian ; and 4, The New Zealand Sub-regions. 
It is to the second of these only, the Australian—the Islands 
of New Holland and Tasmania—that the following observations 
will apply. But of the Zoology even of this limited portion 
of the whole region there is yet much to be learnt. Large 
portions of the north-west and centre of Australia are still a 
terra incognita, and even in the best known districts the smaller 
forms of Animal life have been but little investigated. 
To begin with the Sub-kingdom VERTEBRATA. The 
Class first in rank and importance is the MEammialian, and 
in this Australia occupies certainly the most unique position in 
the universe. The absence of most of the Orders of this Class 
common in other parts of the world, and the prevailing 
