It is difficult to account for the presence of the Amiurina in North America. They form a well-marked division of the Bagrina, which are well represented in Africa and the East Indies, but absent in South America; it is evident, therefore, they should not be regarded as immigrants from the south, as is the case with the Palæarctic Siluroids. Nor, again, has the connection between South and North America been established sufficiently long to admit of the supposition that these Siluroids could have spread in the interval from the south to the northern parts of the continent, for some of the species are found as far north as Pine Islands Lake (54° lat. N.)[27]

III. Southern Zone.

The boundaries of this zone have been indicated in the description of the Equatorial Zone; they overlap the southern boundaries of the latter in South Australia and South America, but we have not at present the means of exactly defining the limits to which southern types extend northwards. This zone includes Tasmania with at least a portion of South-eastern Australia (Tasmanian sub-region), New Zealand and the Auckland Islands (New Zealand sub-region), and Chili, Patagonia, Terra del Fuego, and the Falkland Islands (Fuegian sub-region). No freshwater fishes are known from Kerguelen’s Land, or from islands beyond 55° lat. S. The southern extremity of Africa has to be excluded from this zone so far as Freshwater fishes are concerned.

This zone is, with regard to its extent as well as to the number of species, the smallest of the three; yet its ichthyological features are well marked; they consist in the presence of two peculiar families, each of which is analogous to a northern type, viz. the Haplochitonidæ, which represent the Salmonidæ, Haplochiton being the analogue of Salmo, and Prototroctes that of Coregonus; and the Galaxiidæ, which are the Pikes of the Southern Hemisphere.

Although geographically widely separate from each other, the Freshwater fishes of the three divisions are nevertheless so closely allied that conclusions drawn from this group of animals alone would hardly justify us in regarding these divisions as sub-regions. One species of Galaxias (G. attenuatus) and the three Lampreys are found in all three, or at least two, sub-regions.

Freshwater Fishes of the Southern Zone.

Tasmanian.N. Zealand.Fuegian.
Percichthys......3
Siluridæ—
Diplomystax......1
Nematogenys......1
Trichomycterina [Neotrop.]......5
Gadopsidæ1......
(Retropinna...1...)
Haplochitonidæ111
Galaxiidæ654
Petromyzontidæ313
11818

But little remains to be added in explanation of this list; Percichthys is in Chili the autochthont form of the cosmopolitan group of Percina. Diplomystax, an Arioid fish of Chili, and Nematogenys seem to have crossed the Andes from Tropical America at a comparatively early period, as these genera are not represented on the eastern side of South America; the Trichomycterina occur on both sides of the Andes, which they ascend to a considerable height. Retropinna is a true Salmonoid, allied to, and representing in the Southern Hemisphere the Northern Smelt, Osmerus. In both these genera a part of the specimens live in the sea, and ascend rivers periodically to spawn; another part remain in rivers and lakes, where they propagate, never descending to the sea, this freshwater race being constantly smaller than their marine brethren. That this small Teleostean of the Northern Hemisphere should reappear, though in a generically modified form, in New Zealand, without having spread over other parts of the Southern Zone, is one of the most remarkable, and at present inexplicable facts of the geographical distribution of freshwater fishes.

Fig. 104.—Haplochiton zebra, Straits of Magelhæn.