produced by great Geographical Changes, 389 



• We find, further, that the only forms of wingless bird occur- 

 ring in countries where the true Carnivora occur are those of the 

 Struthionidse ; while, on the other hand, the lately exterminated 

 forms of the Dodo and Pezophaps, the Dinornidae and Notornis 

 of New Zealand, and the wingless birds of Madagascar, have only 

 been found to occur in lands where they have been secluded from 

 these enemies, until, with the exception of the Apteryx, they pe- 

 rished at the hands of the most formidable of predaceous animals, 

 Man. We are at no loss for the explanation why the Struthio- 

 nidse have sustained themselves in the face of these predaceous 

 contemporaries ; for the habits of wariness and swiftness of foot 

 pertaining to this order of birds enable them successfully to 

 escape the craft of man and the swiftness of his horse, and even 

 the attacks of the lion. The gigantic birds of Madagascar and 

 New Zealand have not yet been found to occur in Australia ; but 

 the presence of such gigantic forms of Carnivora in Australia as 

 the Nototherium, may have been the cause of the extinction of 

 these birds in that country, if indeed it were not man himself*. 

 We see, further, that up to a certain period these gigantic birds 

 survived upon the post-cretaceous continent, but hitherto they 

 have not been found there in a deposit so recent as the period of 

 the incoming of the true Carnivora. The Gastornis of the Paris 

 Basin had, according to Prof. Owen, affinities with both the 

 Notornis of New Zealand and with the Solitaire of the Indian 

 Ocean, and it was perhaps almost as defenceless an animal ; but 

 we know of no more formidable Carnivora contemporaneous 

 with that bird than the Hyaenodon, and its allied Lophiodont 

 carnivors. 



Summary and Conclusion. 



In the preceding sections I have endeavoured to deduce that 

 the secondary continents, governed by the direction of the vol- 

 canic bands of the period, had an alignement trending nearly 

 from north to south, and that this alignement had probably an 

 important influence in the maintenance of the equable climates 

 of the period ; that while portions of these secondary continents 

 have, we sec, been incorporated into the post-cretaceous conti- 

 nents, other portions remain at the present day in a state of 

 complete isolation, originating, however, at different dates ; that 

 an entire change in this alignement took place at the close of the 

 cretaceous period, the east and west direction, in which the vol- 



* That they will be found, however, to have at one time existed there I 

 feel little doubt ; indeed their remains are stated to have occurred in 

 caverns near Melbourne. See Blandowski, Trans. Phil. Soc. of Victoria, 

 p. 55. 



