1961] 
Darlington — Australian Carabid Beetles 
19 
system of North Queensland is not much more than ten miles wide, 
but it seems to have been a more effective barrier than the much wider 
gaps of dry hilly country between the North Queensland, Eungella, 
and South Queensland rain forest areas. 
Summary of Transition from New Guinea to Tasmania 
The transition of wet forest carabid faunas from New Guinea to 
Tasmania involves two main changes. First, between the rain forests 
of New Guinea and those of tropical Australia is a complete change 
of flightless stocks of Carabidae and also a change from Agonini to 
Pterostichini as dominant tribes, although the change is overlain and 
superficially concealed by many winged species and genera of Carabi- 
dae that are common to New Guinea and Australia and that form a 
broad and complex transition, not fully described here. Between the 
tropical rain forests of North Queensland and the subtropical ones 
of South Queensland etc. are very many changes of species and genera 
but no fundamental change in the nature of faunas or in dominant 
groups. The second main change is farther south, and is a complex 
transition from tropical to south temperate groups. The area of transi- 
tion (of overlapping and mixing of faunal elements) is from the 
southern edge of Queensland to Tasmania. And the transition in- 
volves not only changes of species and genera but a second partial 
change of dominant tribes, from Pterostichini as principal dominants 
to (in Tasmania) dominance shared by Broscini and Trechini (and 
Licinini) as well as some Pterostichini. This change has been de- 
scribed as it occurs among selected flightless geophile Carabidae, but 
it is reinforced and made more complex by changes of winged Carabi- 
dae too. 
The whole transition of wet forest carabid faunas from New 
Guinea to Tasmania might be described as a very irregular stepcline 
of flightless groups overlain by a more regular transition (or cline 
of many smaller steps) of winged groups. The flightless Carabidae 
of the isolated rain forests of Cape York and the Elliot Range are 
outside the main pattern and complicate it, and of course the situa- 
tion as a whole is much more complex in detail than I can describe 
here. 
Historical Duplications : Two Land Bridges 
It is a good working principle of zoogeography that situations should 
be analyzed first by study of the best known and most significant 
groups of animals, especially mammals, but that other groups may add 
important details to what the mammals show. In the present case, 
two former land bridges are involved: from New Guinea to Australia 
