440 
THE AGE OE NEW ZEALAND. 
process lias been going on in them which is still to be seen 
in many of the South Sea islands, whose barren surface, 
when raised above the ocean, gradually becomes clothed 
with vegetation, through the agency of birds, the drifting of 
the waves, and the aid of winds, but this will not account for 
the peculiarities of those countries, which possess a flora and 
a fauna dissimilar to any other now existing, remarkable for 
their wingless* birds, marsupial animals, and those unique 
specimens of animal life, the echidna and ornithorinchus 
paradoxus. 
These singularities, in a great measure, apply to the many 
lone islands which dot those southern seas. Norfolk Island, 
with its peculiar sylva and its noble araucaria, which is only 
found within its contracted limits, and that of Philip Island ad- 
jacent to it, which is remarkable for possessing a parrot closely 
allied to the kakapo, the owl parrot of New Zealand. The 
little Isle of Pines, still covered with a conifer peculiar to it. 
Araucaria Cookii, which from its height becomes a regular 
land-mark. The lone Isle of Amsterdam, which is but a 
mere rock rising up from the depths of the ocean, has still 
its grove of pines upon it ; and the equally solitary Isle of 
Tristan D’acunah possesses a large rail, which, singular to 
say, does not inhabit the whole of the isle, but confines itself 
to the precincts of a marsh on one side of it. Lord Howe's 
Island, the Auckland Isles, the Chatham and others, might 
also be noticed as containing allied portions of the flora and 
fauna of New Zealand, although so widely separated from it, 
thus contributing their united testimony to their having all 
been anciently parts of one and the same continent. 
Dr. Sclater’s deductions on Madagascar and the Mascarene 
Islands* corroborate the views here taken, that the anomalies 
of their mammal fauna can best be explained by supposing 
that, anterior to the existence of Africa in its present shape, 
a large continent occupied parts of the Atlantic and Indian 
Oceans, stretching out towards what is now America on the 
* The femur of a large bird allied to the Dinornis was lately found in the 
Gympsie gold diggings, Australia, at the great depth of 180 feet below the 
surface. — Times , July 14, 1867, 
