loving animals also are represented in the relationship, as well as earth-worms, which shun the frozen soil.[1] This affinity originates from the time when Australia was still connected to India. According to Fig. 15, this connection had already been broken in the Lower Jurassic.
The second faunal element in Australia is very well known, for to it belong the singular mammals—the Marsupialia and Monotremata—which are so sharply differentiated from the fauna of the Sunda Islands (the Wallace-Limit of the mammals). This element of the fauna shows kindred relationships to that of South America. For example, marsupials now live not only in Australia, the Moluccas and various Pacific islands, but also in South America (a single species of opossum is found even in North America); there are also known fossil from North America and Europe, but not from Asia. Even the parasites of the Australian and South American marsupials are the same. E. Bresslau[2] emphasizes the fact that three-quarters of the approximately 175 species of the Geoplanidæ among the flat-worms are found in these
- ↑ According to Michaelsen’s information, the Octochætinæ connect New Zealand directly to Madagascar and India, together with northern Further India, by an interesting skipping-over of the large Australian block lying between. But the most striking relations are shown by the numerous genera of Megascolecinæ, which connect Australia, and either the North Island of New Zealand, or the whole area of New Zealand, with Ceylon, and, in particular, Southern India, and sometimes also the north of India and of Further India (and, strange to say, occasionally the west coast of North America). The fact that the earthworms show no relationship between Australia and Africa confirms our assumption that these continents did not directly adjoin one another, but were connected only through India and Antarctica respectively.
- ↑ E. Bresslau, Artikel Plathelminthes in Handwörterbuch der Naturwissenschaften, 7, p. 993.—Zschokke, Zentralbl. Bakt. Paras., 1, p. 36, 1904.
