PROOFS OF RECENT SUBSIDENCE. 257 
_ which those who set themselves to understand the history of the 
physical world would draw their conclusions. 
M. Alph. Milne Edwards, in reply to the communication of 
M. Em. Blanchard, made the following observations :— 
“New Zealand, from the point of view of its fauna, offers 
real analogies with certain other lands which are, however, geo- 
graphically very far distant; these are the Mascarene Islands.: 
In Mauritius, Bourbon and Rodriguez, as in New Zealand, there 
were formerly no terrestrial mammals, with the exception of 
some bats; all those which are now found there having been 
transported by human agencies. They had a varied population 
of autochthonous birds incapable of flight, among which the 
most remarkable were the Dodo, the Solitaire, the Giant (? /e 
Géant), the Blue-bird, and several species belonging to the curious 
type of the Ocydromide, of which our learned colleague has just 
been speaking. It was after a study of this ancient avi-fauna, 
which is absolutely extinct at the present day, that I spoke as 
follows in the Academy in 1867 :—‘ It is difficult to believe that 
islands so small, and apparently so little favourable to the pros- 
perity of their respective faunas, should each have been the birth- 
place of species which are so distinctly characterised and so 
different from all other existing forms. It appears to me more 
probable that each of the volcanic cones which constitute the 
nucleus of those islets now scattered over a wide extent of ocean, 
existed previous to the subsidence of widely-extended lands, and 
that each served as a final refuge for the zoological population 
of the circumjacent regions which in our day lie deeply sub. 
merged.’ Some years later, after renewed researches, I added 
that this fauna, while quite different from that of Madagascar, 
Africa, India, or of Australia, had yet such points of resemblance 
with the New Zealand fauna that we could not hesitate to class 
it among the southern faunz. It is therefore possible that it 
extended much further to the south, and thus the idea is sug- 
gested of a great land which existed in that part of the Atlantic 
Ocean which, at the present day, we find occupied with immense 
banks of marine plants known by the common name of kelp. 
“The absence of mammalia from any particular region does 
not of necessity imply that the country is one unsuitable for 
them to live in, but that it has been separated from the rest of 
the globe since before the advent of mammals. 
“This is what has taken place in the Mascarene Islands, in 
New Zealand, and many islands in Polynesia. I had the oppor- 
tunity of working out the idea in a long research on the fauna of 
the southern regions, which gained the Bordin prize in 1874 and 
which was analysed by our regretted colleague, M. Roulin, in a 
report read before the Academy. I then sought to utilize the 
information furnished by the study of the New Zealand fauna, 
to show the relations which formerly existed between this great 
