444 



ISLAND LIFE. 



[part II. 



the sea-bottom were elevated G^OOO feet, has a very remarkable 

 conformation, extending in a broad mass westward, and then 

 sending out two great arms, one reaching to beyond Lord Howe's 

 Island, while the other stretches over Norfolk Island to the 

 great barrier reef, thus forming a connection with tropical 

 Australia and New Guinea. Temperate Australia, on the other 

 hand, is divided from New Zealand by an oceanic gulf about 

 700 miles wide and between 2,000 and 3,000 fathoms deep. 

 The 2,000-fathom line embraces all the islands immediately 

 round New Zealand ; and a submarine plateau at a depth 

 somewhere between one and two thousand fathoms stretches 

 southward to the Antarctic continent. Judging from these indi- 

 cations, we should say that the most probable ancient connections 

 of New Zealand were with tropical Australia and New Guinea, 

 and perhaps, at a still more remote epoch, with the great 

 Southern continent by means of intervening lands and islands ; 

 and we shall find that a land-connection or near approximation 

 in these two directions, at remote periods, will serve to ex- 

 plain many of the remarkable anomalies which these islands 

 present. 



Zoological Gharacter of New Zealand. — We see, then, that 

 both geologically and geographically New Zealand has more 

 of the character of a " continental " than of an oceanic " island, 

 yet its zoological characteristics are such as almost to bring it 

 within the latter category — and it is this which gives it its 

 anomalous character. It is usually considered to possess no 

 indigenous mammalia ; it has no snakes, and only one frog ; 

 it possesses (living or quite recently extinct) an extensive group 

 of birds incapable of flight ; and its productions generally are 

 wonderfully isolated, and seem to bear no predomina^nt or close 

 relation to those of Australia or any other continent. These 

 are the characteristics of an oceanic island ; and thus we find 

 that the inferences from its physical structure and those from 

 its forms of life directly contradict each other. Let us see 

 hov/ far a closer examination of the latter will enable us to 

 account for this apparent contradiction. 



Mammalia of Nev: Zealand. — The only undoubtedly indi- 

 genous mammalia appear to be two species of bats, one of which 



