Birds of New Zealand. 
217 
subject^ had not lately the attempt been made by Professor 
Alphonse Milne-Edwards, in Paris, to show, from a compa¬ 
rison of the remains of the extinct ornithic fauna exhumed in 
Madagascar, Mauritius, and Rodriguez, that in some distant 
ages New Zealand formed portion of a large continent or of 
a group of more or less extensive islands in the southern 
hemisphere, which at one time were in some way connected 
with each other. 
He thinks that additional confirmation can be obtained 
from the ascertained occurrence of different Ocydromidse, 
such as the Aphanapteryx and the Miserythrus leguati , which 
latter, he informs me (letter to me, dated “ Jardin des Plantes, 
Paris, Aug. 3, 1873 ”), bears close resemblance to our com¬ 
mon Woodhen ( Ocydromus australis ). 
However enticing the tracing of close affinities must be to 
the naturalist-philosopher, I believe that it would be rather 
rash to conclude the connexion of two such distant insular 
groups from a few forms of birds only. Leaving the general 
question alone for the present, to which I shall return shortly, 
it is impossible for me to conceive that two countries, which 
in all other respects have such a dissimilar and distinctive 
flora and fauna could have been united in any way without 
having left other living proofs of such connexion in their pre¬ 
sent endemic organic life, not to speak of fossil remains. 
We know that Madagascar is a zoological subprovince of 
South Africa (Ethiopian region), but having a fauna so pecu¬ 
liar that, according to Sir Charles Lyell, it must have been 
separated from Africa probably since the Upper Miocene era. 
New Zealand, on the other hand, although it may have 
been formerly of larger extent, has never been more than an 
oceanic continental island from a zoological point of view-—a 
theory first propounded by Darwin and Wallace, and with 
which I fully agree. 
It would be rather a difficult task to prove upon such slen¬ 
der grounds as the presence of a few species of struthious and 
ralline birds will afford, that both countries could possibly 
have been connected. Moreover the difference in the ana¬ 
tomical structure of the three Madagascar species of AEpy- 
