, less than 1,500 fathoms
below the surface, extends over this area, 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 as far as the Fijis to the north,
while a submarine plateau at a depth somewhere between one and two thousand
fathoms stretches southward to the Antarctic continent. Judging from these
indications, we should say that the most probable ancient connections of
New Zealand were with tropical Australia, New Caledonia, and the Fiji
Islands, 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 explain 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 {474} 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 indigenous mammalia appear
to be two species of bats, one of which (_Scotophilus tuberculatus_) is,
according to Mr. Dobson, identical with an Australian form, while the other
(_Mystacina tuberculata_) forms a very remarkable and isolated genus of
Emballonuridae, a family which extends throughout all the tropical regions
of the globe. The genus Mystacina was formerly considered to belong to the
American Phyllostomidae, bu