he group and their universal distribution in past time, renders all
suggestions of special modes of communication between the parts of the
globe in which their scattered remnants _now_ happen to exist, altogether
superfluous and misleading.

The bearing of this argument on our present subject is, that so far as
accounting for the presence of wingless birds in New Zealand is concerned,
we have nothing whatever to do with any possible connection, by way of a
southern continent or antarctic islands, with South America and South
Africa, because the nearest allies of its moas and kiwis are the
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 elsewhere[124] I need only here point
out its bearing on the hypothesis 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 {483}
genera of birds peculiar to the Australian continent (with Tasmania), many
of them almost or quite confined to its temperate portions, and that no
single one of these should be represented in temperate New Zealand.[125]
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 th