Chap, xxl] 
NEW ZEALAND. 
453 
cassowaries and emus, and we have distinct indications of a 
former land extension towards North Australia and New Guinea, 
which is exactly what we require for the original entrance of 
the struthious type into the New Zealand area. 
Winged Birds and lower Vertebrates of New Zealand . — Having 
given a pretty full account of the New Zealand fauna else- 
where 1 I need only here point out its hearing on the hypo- 
thesis now advanced, of the former land-connection having been 
with North Australia, New Guinea, and the Western Pacific 
Islands, rather than with the temperate regions of Australia. 
Of the Australian genera of birds, which are found also in 
New Zealand, almost every one ranges also into New Guinea 
or the Pacific Islands, while the few that do not extend beyond 
Australia are found in its northern districts. As regards the 
peculiar New Zealand genera, all whose affinities can be traced 
are allied to birds which belong to the tropical parts of the 
Australian region ; while the starling family, to which four of 
the most remarkable New Zealand birds belong (the genera 
Creadion, Heterolocha, and Callaeas), is totally wanting in 
temperate Australia and is comparatively scarce in the entire 
Australian region, but is abundant in the Oriental region, with 
which New Guinea and the Moluccas are in easy communication. 
It is certainly a most suggestive fact that there are more than 
sixty genera of birds peculiar to the Australian continent (with 
Tasmania), many of them almost or quite confined to its tempe- 
rate portions, and that no single one of these should be repre- 
sented in temperate New Zealand . 2 The affinities of the living 
and more highly organised, no less than those of the extinct and 
wingless birds, strikingly accord with the line of communication 
indicated by the deep submarine bank connecting these temperate 
islands with the tropical parts of the Australian region. 
The reptiles, so far as they go, are quite in accordance with 
1 Geographical Distribution of Animals, Yol. I., p. 450. 
2 In my Geographical Distribution of Animals (I. p. 541) I have given 
two peculiar Australian genera ( Orthonyx and Tribonyx) as occurring in 
New Zealand. But the former has been found in New Guinea, while the 
New Zealand bird is considered to form a distinct genus, Clitonyx; and 
the latter inhabits Tasmania, and was recorded from New Zealand through 
an error. (See Ibis, 1873, p. 427.) 
