282 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



prairies— the few survivors of that species are protected in a 

 refuge locality; the Quagga is absent from the South African 

 veld ; the egg of the Great Auk has now an enhanced and 

 melancholy value to oologists ; the Dodo is extinct on the island 

 of Mauritius, where in 1598 it was found abundant ; Steller's 

 Sea-Cow is no more. We now only read of "the last of the 

 Tasmanians," and the encircling gloom is gathering around the 

 Australian aborigines ; while the Kalangs of Java, described by 

 Keane as in some respects the most Ape-like of human beings, 

 are practically extinct. As Prof. J. M. Tyler has well observed, 

 the marsupials, except the Opossum, are confined to Australia, 

 and the oviparous mammals or monotremes to New Zealand. 

 Formerly the marsupials at least ranged all over Europe and 

 Asia, for we have indisputable evidence in their fossil remains. 

 But they have survived only in this isolated area, and here 

 apparently only because their isolation preserved them from the 

 competition with higher forms. If the Australian continent had 

 not been thus early cut off from all the rest of the world, the 

 only trace of both these lower groups would have been the 

 Opossum in America and certain peculiarities in the develop- 

 ment of the egg in higher mammals. This shows us how much 

 weight should be assigned to the formerly popular argument of 

 the " missing links." The wonder is not that so many links are 

 missing, but that any of these primitive forms have come down 

 to us.* As an incentive to investigation of the zoology of the 

 Sandwich Islands, it has been stated " valuable collections are 

 being made and brought home, and unless these are made now 

 they can never be done, as the extinction of much of the present 

 fauna is not only inevitable, but will be immediate."! Fortu- 

 nately much has recently been done in investigating this fauna. 

 The steady march of evolution can only be studied by the records 

 of palaeontology ; the lacunae in the faunistic record of the past 

 can only be really understood by what is going on around us, 

 and has occurred in recent times. Not the decrease of individuals, 

 but the annihilation of species is what we too frequently record, 

 and when we reflect that such studies and records are absolutely 

 quite modern even in historic times, we may well imagine what 



* ' The Whence and the Whither of Man,' pp. 87-8. 

 f ' Eeport Committ. Brit. Assoc. Ipswich,' 1895. 



