CH. V] ORIGIN OF PARROTS. 221 



old world, becoming for a time extinct in its place of 

 origin; it was subsequently reintroduced, apparently by 

 man. An instance of this kind shows how careful we 

 must be to guard against the assumption that that locality 

 where a given group is most abundant is its place of 

 origin. It is perhaps a stronger argument to use the 

 locality of the more ancient forms of the group as being 

 probably the cradle of the race. 



Fiirbringer has lately urged the antiquity of the genus 

 Stringops, the flightless parrot of New Zealand; this 

 coupled with the presence of abundant parrots in the 

 Australian region — many of them being primitive forms 

 that have preserved the ambiens muscle missing in many, 

 the normal arrangement of the carotids and a completely 

 developed clavicle — argues for that region as being the 

 starting-point of the Parrot tribe. Here we are not 

 helped to any great extent by palaeontology. 



The different regions into which the world is divided 

 possess, as has been pointed out in some detail, in every 

 case a characteristic fauna. That fauna may be or may 

 not be autochthonous; the American Edentates seem to 

 have arisen where we now find them, since no fossil 

 Edentates are known of the American type save in 

 America. Other countries are peopled by immigrants. 

 There can be no doubt that wherever the groups of ani- 

 mals that inhabit oceanic islands arose it was not in those 

 islands ; there is clear evidence that they are the more or 

 less modified descendants of animals that found their way 

 across the sea in some way. 



