82 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
while this continent was connected with China, either directly or 
by a chain of islands, it must have been cut off from the New 
Hebrides by a strait. 
3. ‘Subsidence again followed, and New Zealand was 
reduced for a long time to a number of islands, upon many of 
which the moa lived.” This supposition is necessary to account 
for the number of species of Dinornis which formerly existed, as 
the birds must have been “isolated from one another for a 
sufficiently long period to allow of specific changes being brought 
about.” 
4. Elevation ensued, the isolated islands became connected 
together into one large island, which was not however connected 
with Polynesia, and over which the various species of moa 
roamed. And lastly, 
5. By a process of subsidence the islands assumed something 
of their present form. 
This theory is a most ingenious one, and is well worked out, 
and had available information been at hand as to the depth of the 
circumjacent seas, no doubt many of the conclusions arrived at 
would have been modified. The geological evidences are adduced 
in support of it, and though the distribution of the flora is not 
critically gone into, certain remarkable facts of the distribution of 
genera such as Eucalyptus, Stilbocarpa, Metrosideros, and others are 
brought forward by way of corroboration. 
Some four years after the publication of Prof. Hutton’s paper, 
Mr. A. R. Wallace’s great work on the ‘ Geographical Distri- 
bution of Animals” came out, in which due consideration is given 
to the question of the origin of the New Zealand fauna, and to the 
discussion of Prof. Hutton’s views. Mr. Wallace, in this work, 
does not agree with the idea that there was a former great 
antarctic land connection, but believes that there was a great 
southward extension of land, perhaps considerably beyond the 
Macquaries, and that this being within the range of floating ice 
during the colder epochs, and within easy reach of the antarctic 
continent during the warm periods, there arose “that inter- 
change of genera and species with South America which 
forms one of the characteristic features of the natural history of 
New Zealand.” Prof. Hutton’s theory is primarily based on the 
distribution of the struthious birds, but Mr. Wallace is of opinion 
that the ancestral struthious type probably once spread over the 
larger portion of the globe, and that as higher forms, particularly 
of the carnivora, became developed, it was exterminated every- 
where except in those regions where it was free from their attacks, 
and that in these regions it developed into special forms adapted 
to surrounding conditions. ‘This conclusion is supported ‘“ and 
rendered almost certain by the discovery of remains of this order 
in Europe in Eocene deposits, and by the occurrence of an ostrich 
among the fossils of the Siwalik Hills.” 
While considering that no other form of animal inhabiting 
New Zealand requires a land connection with distant countries to 
account for its presence, Mr. Wailace concludes, in accordance 
with principles well established in an earlier part of his work, 
that the existence is demonstrated of an extensive tract of land 
in the vicinity of Australia, Polynesia, and the antarctic conti- 
nent, without having been actually connected with any of these | 
