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urged that the making of land bridges to admit individual 

 members of an insular fauna, though a tempting business, 

 is an extremely risky one. Above all, it is necessary in postu- 

 lating a land bridge to picture one that would be effective in 

 the admission of the species in question. For a zoologist 

 to account for the admission of the Dingo by a former land 

 bridge, ''where Torres Strait is now," is remarkable. It is 

 little use to make a passage from New Guinea to Australia 

 unless a previous series of land bridges connecting New Guinea 

 to the western Austro-Malayan islands is presupposed, and, 

 finally, land bridges to connect the Austro-Malayan and the 

 Indo-Malayan islands. In other words, Wallace's line muit 

 first be bridged for the benefit of the descendants of the 

 northern wolves, and then a convenient series of land bridges 

 must be provided for the journey, via the Austro-Malayan 

 islands, into the island-continent of Australia. Despite the 

 utter improbability of this thesis of recent land bridges for 

 the admission of the Dingo, they have gained wide currency 

 in Australian literature, and are urged, not only to account 

 for the dog, but even for the admission of the aboriginal 

 (see Howitt, etc.). How great would have been the faunal 

 upset in Australia had land connections with the Asiatic con- 

 tinental masses (and nothing short of this will suffice) existed 

 into the human period, is easy to picture, and may be imagined 

 from a study of the very similar conditions existing in the 

 Panama region. No land bridge that could have admitted 

 either the Dingo or man, separately or in company, could 

 have failed to be the high road of entry of a host of the 

 higher placental mammals from the northern land masses. 

 The fact that the Dingo failed to enter Tasmania, and that 

 even Kangaroo Island was beyond his reach, should be remem- 

 bered by those who do not fear to make southern land bridges 

 within the period of the human occupation of Australia. 



With Gerrit Miller's statement, that "dogs were origin- 

 ally domesticated somewhere within the northern area, in- 

 habited by the true Cams, and that they were subsequently 

 taken by man to most of the regions into which they have 

 penetrated," it is impossible, in the face of all the available 

 evidence, to disagree. The Dingo, I imagine, to be no ex- 

 ception to this rule. Just as man carried domesticated dogs 

 to the Pacific Islands, where no indigenous member of the 

 genus Canis exists, or has ever existed, so he carried him to 

 Australia. And to Australia, as to the Pacific Islands, he 

 carried him by a sea route. Some years ago, in a lecture 

 delivered in London, I expressed the opinion that "the 

 progenitor of the Talgai man came with his wife, he came 



