We have seen something of the coast of this area; let us now try for a moment to picture it as a whole. The map shows us an oblong block, which lies east and west, on either side of the Tropic of 48 Capricorn. On the north, two peninsulas, Arnhem Land and Cape York, project towards the Equator; between them is the Gulf of Carpentaria, the only deep indentation in the whole continent. On the south, Victoria, continued by Tasmania, stretches into the cool waters of the Southern Ocean. A coastal plain, broad in the north, narrow elsewhere, fringes a plateau which occupies the greater part of the oblong. The plain is narrowest in the east, and the plateau edge most marked, so that it resembles a series of mountain ranges. Rivers, short for the most part, plunge down the seaward edge of the plateau. The only large area of lowland is in the south-east, drained by a group of long rivers and shared by four of the Australian States. Some of these rivers lose themselves in the salt lakes and marshes of the inland basin of Lake Eyre; the rest, gathered up by the Murray, reach the sea at the one point where the plateau rim disappears. The tropical lowlands, the temperate coast-plains, the plateau and the long inward slopes of the Murray system are the main features which we shall find recurring in the geography of the various States. * * * * * So far we have dealt only with Australia. New Zealand shows to some extent the peculiarities which mark Australia off from the rest of the world, but on the whole the differences between these two sections of Australasia are more noticeable than the likeness. We might anticipate this, since the dominant fact in the development of the peculiar plant life of Australia is drought; in the case of New Zealand it is moisture. Again, New 49 Zealand has no snakes, and lacks the peculiar animals which we have seen in Australia. In fact, its only native animals are a bat and a rat, the latter perhaps introduced by the Maoris. To compensate for this it has a large group of birds peculiar to itself, including the wingless birds, which may have lost their wings since they had no need for flight from enemies on the ground. The best known of these birds is the _kiwi_; here we see 50 him in his natural haunts. Again, there is the _takahe_, which was at one time thought to be extinct; but one or two specimens have been found, and there may be others still existing. Here 51 is one of these stuffed. Finally there is the gigantic _moa_, 52 which probably existed at the time of Captain Cook’s voyage. Now we can only see its skeleton, but naturalists have attempted to re-construct the whole bird, as we see here. One link New Zealand 53 possesses with a very remote geological past; this is the curious _tuatara_ or three-eyed lizard. He belongs to an extinct group 54