414 
ISLAND LIFE. 
[part II. 
the sea-bottom were elevated 6,000 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 Character 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 predominant 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 
how far a closer examination of the latter will enable us to 
account for this apparent contradiction. 
Mammalia of New Zealand . — The only undoubtedly indi- 
genous mammalia appear to be two species of bats, one of which 
