Canterlury and Westland. 435 



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 proofs 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 that it has a fauna so peculiar, that it must have, according 

 to Sir Charles Lyell, 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 from a zoological point of view, a theory 

 first propounded by Darwin and Wallace, and with which I fully agree. 

 It would be a rather difficult task to prove upon such slender grounds 

 as the presence of a few species of struthious and ralline birds may 

 afford, that both countries might possibly have been connected. 

 Moreover, the difference in the anatomical structure of the three 

 Madagascar species of Aepyornis and of the New Zealand Dinorni- 

 thidce — 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. 

 I cannot agree with Professor Alphonse Milne-Edwards, that the 

 Aepyornis stands nearer to the Dinornis than to the Ostriches, Casuaries 

 and Emus, except in so far that the fossil bones of Madagascar and New 

 Zealand have a more pachy dermal type, than the living species above- 

 named. But I may point out, that the fossil Dromomis Australis of Aus- 

 tralia shows similar characteristics, and I am sure if fossil remains of 

 struthious birds in beds of post-pliocene age were discovered in Africa, 

 America, and Asia that they would exhibit a similar pachydermal 

 character. Judging from Professor Milne-Edwards' own excellent 

 memoirs on the Aepyornis and the fine casts of the unique fossil bones 

 in the Paris Museum, he was good enough to send to the Canterbury 

 Museum I am unable to trace their relationship with our Dinornithidce. 

 It appears to me that the Madagascar species are separated from the 

 former by many fundamental differences, such as ( to point out only a 

 few ) the pneumatic foramen in the femur and the straightness of the 

 trochlear of the metatarsus. And although I am convinced that the 

 struthious character of Aepyornis has sufficiently been proved by the 

 eminent Paris comparative anatomist, I can easily understand that 

 there was at first some show of reason for placing it amongst the 

 sarcoramphous vultures, as has been done by Professor Bianconi. 



