to all former rules, and were incapable of being arranged under any of the systems then in use." New Zealand, though singularly devoid of indigenous mammals and reptiles,--for the only native mammal seems to be a peculiar species of rat, and the only native reptile a small, harmless lizard,--has a scarce less remarkable fauna than either of these great continents. It consists almost exclusively of birds, some of them so ill provided with wings, that, like the _wika_ of the natives, they can only run along the ground. And it is a most significant fact, that both in the two great continents and the New Zealand islands there existed, in the later geologic ages, extinct faunas that bore the peculiar generic characters by which their recent ones are still distinguished. The sloths and armadilloes of South America had their gigantic predecessors in the enormous megatherium and mylodon, and the strongly armed glyptodon; the kangaroos and wombats of Australia had their extinct predecessors in a kangaroo nearly twice the size of the largest living species, and in so huge a wombat, that its bones have been mistaken for those of the hippopotamus; and the ornithic inhabitants of New Zealand had their predecessors in the monstrous birds, such as the dinornis, the aptornis, and the palapteryx,--wingless creatures like the ostrich, that stood from six to twelve feet in height. In these several regions two _generations_ of species of the genera peculiar to them have existed,--the recent generation by whose descendants they are still inhabited, and the extinct gigantic generation, whose remains we find locked up in their soils and caves. But how are such facts reconcileable with the hypothesis of a universal deluge? [Illustration: Fig. 112. MYLODON ROBUSTUS.] [Illustration: Fig. 113. GLYPTODON CLAVIPES.]