Lord Howe Island — PARAMONOV 
83 
Fig. 1. Map showing position of Lord Howe Island. Latitude, 30° 33' S., Longitude, 150° 5 f E. 
some endemic birds but also of one species 
on insect, Carabidion australe , a phasmid. 
4. The endemism of some elements of 
fauna, for example, of birds is very great, 
not only among the existing species but also 
in those recently extinct, some of which were 
completely restricted to the island. 
5. Characteristic also is the absence of some 
Reptilia: snakes are quite absent, fresh water 
Chelonias also. There are recorded only three 
species of lizards. Amphibia are quite absent. 
An extinct turtle (probably a sea species) — 
Meiolania platyceps — was not rare on Lord 
Howe Island. Of the other three species of 
this genus, one, M. oweni , was found at 
Darling Downs, Queensland; a second, M. 
mackayi , was found on the small Walpole 
Island (about 100 miles south east of New 
Caledonia); and the third, M. argentina , in 
Patagonia. Meiolania platyceps became extinct 
rather recently. (Anderson, 1925, 1926.) 
6. There are data that various species of 
plants and animals arrived from time to time 
on the island, but later disappeared as a result 
of unfavourable conditions on the island, or 
from accidental causes, because the island is 
comparatively very small and the number of 
new immigrants usually is not so high as to 
resist occasional destruction. 
7. The endemism on Lord Howe Island 
can be of two kinds: neoendemism and paleo- 
endemism. The neoendemism can be very 
new, i.e., the species can be created in com- 
paratively very short time: a flock of migrant 
birds can reach the island and produce a 
population with more narrow limits of char- 
