454 



ISLAND LIFE. 



[part 11. 



the birds. The lizards belong to three genera,— Hinulia and 

 Mocoa, which have a wide range in the Eastern tropics and the 

 Pacific and Malayan regions, as well as Australia ; and Naultinns, 

 a genus peculiar to New Zealand, but belonging to a family — 

 Geckotidse, spread over the whole of the warmer parts of the 

 world. Australia, on the other hand, has three small but 

 peculiar families, and no less than thirty-six peculiar genera of 

 lizards, many of which are confined to its temperate regions, 

 but no one of them extends to temperate New Zealand. The 

 extraordinary lizard-like Hatteria punctata of New Zealand 

 forms of itself a distinct order of reptiles, in some respects 

 intermediate between lizards and crocodiles, and having therefore 

 no affinity with any living animal. 



The only representative of the Amphibia in New Zealand is 

 a solitary frog of a peculiar genus {Liopelma lioclistetteri) ; but 

 it has no affinity for any of the Australian frogs, which are 

 numerous, and belong to eleven different families; while the 

 Liopelma belongs to a very distinct family (Bombinatoridse), 

 confined to Europe and temperate South America. 



Of the fresh-water fishes we need only say here, that none 

 belong to peculiar Australian types, but are related to those of 

 temperate South America or of Asia. 



The Invertebrate classes are comparatively little known, and 

 their modes of dispersal are so varied and exceptional that the 

 facts presented by their distribution can add little weight to 

 those already adduced. We will, therefore, now proceed to the 

 conclusions which can fairly be drawn from the general facts of 

 New Zealand natural history already known to us. 



Deductions from the peculiarities of the Nevj Zealand Fauna. — 

 The total absence (or extreme scarcity) of mammals in New 

 Zealand obliges us to place its union with North Australia and 

 New Guinea at a very remote epoch. We must either go back 

 to a time when Australia itself had not yet received the ancestral 

 forms of its present marsupials and monotremes, or we must 

 suppose that the portion of Australia with which New Zealand 

 was connected was then itself isolated from the mainland, and. 

 was thus without a mammalian population. We shall see in 

 our next chapter that there are certain facts in the distribution 



