210 NEW ZEALAND. [CH. IV 



Anomalous islands. 



New Zealand is spoken of by Mr Wallace with justice 

 as an "anomalous" island. Though continental it has 

 many of the characters of an oceanic island which has 

 never had any connection with a continent, It contrasts 

 in the most marked way with Madagascar. Unless the 

 mysterious carnivore already referred to really turns out 

 to be what has been suggested, a kind of otter, New 

 Zealand possesses no indigenous mammals except the 

 flying bats, which are largely uninfluenced by the ordinary 

 barriers to mammalian dispersal. The " Maori rat " may 

 be slightly different from the Mus rattus; but the 

 difference, if present, is not considerable. On the other 

 hand there is one frog, and frogs are absent from truly 

 oceanic islands. Most remarkable are the birds of New 

 Zealand and the unique Hatteria, the representative of 

 an otherwise extinct group of Saurians. The fact that 

 the majority of the birds are flightless is due perhaps 

 to the absence of destructive mammalia; this Sightless- 

 ness applies not only to the Apteryx and the Dinorni- 

 thidse, but in a lesser degree to the but recently extinct 

 Cnemiornis and to the Rails. The islands are perhaps 

 too large to permit of a comparison between this in- 

 capacity for flight on the part of the birds of New 

 Zealand and the defective wings of the Coleoptera of 

 oceanic islands generally. Before considering the bear- 

 ings of these facts upon former land connections, if any, 

 between New Zealand and the most adjacent regions, it is 

 convenient to refer to an ingenious suggestion on the 



