land.[1] Madagascar is the only island on the globe with a fairly rich mammalian fauna which is separated from a continent by a depth greater than a thousand fathoms; and no other island presents so many peculiarities in these animals, or has preserved so many lowly organised and archaic forms. The exceptional character of its productions agrees exactly with its exceptional isolation by means of a very deep arm of the sea.
New Zealand possesses no known mammals and only a single species of batrachian; but its geological structure is perfectly continental. There is also much evidence that it does possess one mammal, although no specimens have been yet obtained.[2] Its reptiles and birds are highly peculiar and more numerous than in any truly oceanic island. Now the sea which directly separates New Zealand from Australia is more than 2000 fathoms deep, but in a north-west direction there is an extensive bank under 1000 fathoms, extending to and including Lord Howe's Island, while north of this are other banks of the same depth, approaching towards a submarine extension of Queensland on the one hand, and New Caledonia on the other, and altogether suggestive of a land union with Australia at some very remote period. Now the peculiar relations of the New Zealand fauna and flora with those of Australia and of the tropical Pacific Islands to the northward indicate such a connection, probably during the Cretaceous period; and here, again, we have the exceptional depth of the dividing sea and the form of the ocean bottom according well with the altogether exceptional isolation of New Zealand, an isolation which has been held by some naturalists to be great enough to justify its claim to be one of the primary Zoological Regions.
The Teachings of the Thousand-Fathom Line.
If now we accept the annexed map as showing us approximately how far beyond their present limits our continents may
- ↑ For a full account of the peculiarities of the Madagascar fauna, see my Island Life, chap. xix.
- ↑ See Island Life, p. 446, and the whole of chaps. xxi. xxii. More recent soundings have shown that the Map at p. 443, as well as that of the Madagascar group at p. 387, are erroneous, the ocean around Norfolk Island and in the Straits of Mozambique being more than 1000 fathoms deep. The general argument is, however, unaffected.
