AUSTRALIAN ANCESTRY OF THE CROWNED 

 PIGEON OF NEW GUINEA. 



By C. W. Pe ¥iP M- A . 



\ 



The welcome which the writer would extend to any new insight 

 into the relations existing between th'e immediate p.st and the 

 present of Australian life, touching citl»er its distribute in space, 

 its consanguinity or its degree of prolificacy in the two periods, per- 

 suades him to bring under the notice of others anything bearing 

 directly on the subject. From one pojnt of view its several localisa- 

 tions appear the most instructive, and 'these are certainly at present 

 the most rarely illustrated by fossils,, A kerning opportunity of 

 transmitting a ray of light, however slander, upon them is therefore 

 thankfully accepted. 



The Gouras or Crowned Pigeon the giants of their tribe, 

 nurtured solely under subequatorial c<!> nJitioilS in New Guinea and 

 its satellites to the north-east are one M the characteristic forms of 

 vertebrate life adapted to the dense, j hot. and dripping jungles of 

 thos-; regions. To find progenitors of V^em in south central Queens- 

 land is to recognise the former prevalent of similar conditions where 

 moderate temperature and aridity mitigated only by titful rains 

 form the staple of the existing clinnte.' Withstanding all tempta- 

 tion to the contrary we must leave it the combined effort of the 

 astronomer, physical geographer and (geologist to account for so 

 great a meteorological revolution, wi for our part are kept to the 

 matter in hand by a second inference n}°™ germane to biology to be 

 •drawn from the fossils which have suggested the former. Until now 

 it has remained doubtful — to the writei" at least — whether the tree- 

 kangaroos of the Papua-like scrubs frin^ in g our north-eastern coasts 

 were or were not colonists from New Q'tinea which have migrated 

 southward and been isolated by interception in the rear. If we have 

 evidence before us th it their companions m Fapuan scrub life, the 

 Gouras, have pre-existed in mid Au trf a ^i the debite is closed and 

 the noes seem to have it. Still more important is the testimony such 



