430 Proceedings. 



Himantoiyus, Botaurus, TIcematcypKjS, several species of ducks, and of a number 

 of still smaller birds which cannot be distinguished from bones belooging to 

 recent species. The i-emarkable fringed lizard, Hatteria punctata^ was also an 

 inhabitant of this island, as several bones belonging to it were found with the 

 Moa bones. 



Professor Owen having described at some length, in several of his memoirs 

 on Dinornis, the affinities our struthious birds bear to those of other 

 countries, pointing out at the same time the peculiarities in which they 

 vary from them, it would have been unnecessary for me to add anything to 

 the subject had not an attempt been lately made by Professor Alphonse 

 Milne-Edwards, in Paris, to show, from a comparison of the remains of the 

 extinct ornithic fauna exhumed in Madagascar, Mauritius, and Rodriguez, 

 that in some distant ages New Zealand formed a portion of a large continent, 

 or of a group of more or less extensive islands in the Southern Hemisphei-e, 

 which at one time were in some way connected with each other. He tliinks 

 that additional confirmation can be obtained from the ascertained occurrence of 

 dijBferent OcydromidEe, such as the Aphanapteryx and the Miserythrus legvati, 

 which latter he informs me (letter to me, dated " Jardin des Plantes, Paris, 

 Aug. 3, 1873 ") bears close resemblance to our common woodhen {Ocydromus 

 australis). 



However enticing the tracing of close affinities must be to the naturalist- 

 philosopher, I believe that it would be rather rash to conclude the connection 

 of two such distant insular groups from a few forms of birds only. Leaving 

 the general question alone for the present, to which I shall return shortly, it is 

 impossible for me to conceive that two countries, which in all other respects 

 have such a dissimilar and distinctive flora and fauna, could have been united 

 in any way without having left other living pi'oofs of such connection in their 

 present endemic organic life, not to speak of fossil remains. 



We know that Madagascar is a zoological sub-province of South Africa 

 (Ethiopian region), but having a fauna so peculiar that it must, according 

 to Sir Charles Lyell, have been separated from Africa probably since the 

 upper miocene era. New Zealand, on the other hand, although it may have 

 been formerly of larger extent, has never been more than an oceanic continental 

 island fi'om a zoological point of vicAv, a theory first propounded by Darwin 

 and Wallace, and with which I fully agree. It would be rather a difficidt 

 task to prove, upon such slender grounds as the presence of a few species of 

 Struthious and Ealline birds will afibrd, that both countries could possibly 

 have been connected. Moreover, the diffisrence in the anatomical structure 

 of the three Madagascar species of jEpyornis and of the New Zealand 

 Dinornithidie — using this latter term in a general sense — is so enormous that 

 I fail to see how they possibly could prove that connection in any way. 



