ANNIVEBSABY ADDRESS. 23 



obtained. The most westerly in 275 fathoms was 200 miles from 

 the land, and 125 miles eastward of the 1,100 fathoms sounding. 

 The shoal water, Captain Wares says, extends probably 100 miles 

 further to westward, giving a total breadth of 300 miles for the 

 shallow water. The bottom was hard and smooth. The shallow 

 water is supposed to extend to the somewhat similar banks to 

 the westward of the north-west cape of New Zealand ; but at the 

 south-west extremity of the middle island, which is the nearest 

 point of land to Australia, there is every probability that the 

 deep water extends to within a short distance of the New Zea- 

 land coast. (Captain JSfares to Sir Hercules Robinson, 2nd July, 

 1874.) 



My own view has been long ago expressed that the older rocks 

 of New Holland and New Zealand form parallel anticlinals 

 bordering the synclinal depression of the ocean, and this is nearly 

 the same as Peschel's view. Though this depression descends to 

 a depth rather more than the height of Mount Cook, there 

 is no reason why, if denudation had not carried away the 

 more level formations, a passage could not have existed across 

 what would then have been a connected country, or a chain of 

 islands. And as Sir James Ross had soundings 280 miles N. 80° 

 "W. from the Three Kings, there is a sort of prolongation of the 

 north end of New Zealand towards Queensland, with intermediate 

 high islands such as Howe and Norfolk and others, and therefore 

 the inference ought to be allowed consideration. This was the 

 ground on which believing the femur of a bird which was found 

 at Peak Downs, at a considerable depth under drift gravel and 

 resting on granite, to belong to Dinomis, (as Mr. Krefft also 

 believed after comparing the bones with the similar bones of 

 Dinomis in the Museum), I put such an inference in a letter to 

 the Geological Magazine (vi. 383), and again in my Address to 

 this Society in 1870, as an argument for the former connection of 

 the two countries, which have since been separated by a synclinal 

 curve of the rock formations forming the sea channel between 

 them. Professor Owen, however, in obedience to the law he has 

 enunciated as to the occurrence of animals of the same character 



