490 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
remarkable change in the conformation of the existing land would take 
place. New Zealand would be extended very greatly to the west and north- 
west, and two long narrow arms would stretch, one to Lord Howe’s Island, 
and the other by Norfolk Island to the Great Barrier Reef, and thus a con- 
nection with North-eastern Australia would be made. The same elevation 
would extend the area of Australia round its western, southern, and eastern 
coasts, while a long tongue of land would unite it with Tasmania, and would 
reach to the 50th parallel S. latitude. But even with this great elevation of 
6,000 feet, a wide sea would remain between New Zealand and temperate 
Australia. The northern extension of Australia would connect it on the 
one hand with Malaysia, Borneo, and Celebes, while from New Guinea 
a broad eastern extension would include the New Hebrides. Starting 
from these indications Mr. Wallace shows that we ought to expect to 
find that New Zealand was most probably connected at a remote period 
‘with tropical Australia and New Guinea, and, perhaps, at a still more 
remote epoch, with the great southern continent by means of inter- 
vening lands and islands,” as ‘‘a submarine plateau at a depth somewhere 
between one and two thousand fathoms stretches southward to the antarcti¢ 
continent.” 
It is not my intention here to follow Mr. Wallace in all the arguments 
he adduces to show the origin of our fauna, but a few of his facts are sug- 
gestive and confirmatory of his theory, as opposed to that of Professor 
Hutton, which he again discusses at some length. Thus our struthious 
birds are shown to be allied, not to the rheas of South America, but to the 
cassowaries and emus of North Australia and New Guinea. Again, ‘ the 
starling family, to which four of the most remarkable New Zealand birds 
belong (the genera Creadion, Heteralocha, and Calleas), is totally wanting @ 
temperate Australia, and is comparatively scarce in the entite Australian 
region, but is abundant in the Oriental region, with which New Guinea and 
the Moluccas are in easy communication. It is certainly a most suggestive 
fact that there are more than sixty genera of birds peculiar to the Australian 
continent (with Tasmania), many of them almost or quite confined to ed 
temperate portions, and that no single one of these should be represented 
in temperate New Zealand.” 
But this connection with tropical Australia must necessarily have been 
at a remote period, before the latter received its mammalian fauna, oF else 
that portion of Australia which was in connection with New Zealand “ W4* 
itself isolated from the mainland, and was thus without a mammalian popP™ 
_ lation.” And this is the essentially novel and interesting part of the theory — 
apes Wallace seeks to Prove by an _ examination ee Senn : 
