490 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



remarkable change in tlie 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 Keef, 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 antarctic 

 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 Greadion, Heteralocha, and Calleas), is totally wanting in 

 temperate Australia, and is comparatively scarce in the entke 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 its 

 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, or else 

 that portion of Australia which was in connection with New Zealand " was 

 itself isolated from the mainland, and was thus without a mammalian popu- 

 lation." And this is the essentially novel and interesting part of the theory 

 which Mr. Wallace seeks to prove by an examination of our flora, and by 

 the existing geological conditions of Australia. 



