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from Europe or North Asia in middle or late Tertiary times, and have flourished there in consequence of a less severe competition with highly-developed forms

of life.

The birds of Australia and South America only exhibit a few cases of very remote and general affinity, which are best explained by the preservation in each country of once wide-spread types, but is quite inconsistent with the theory of a direct union between the two countries during Tertiary times.

Reptiles are even more destitute of proofs of any such connection than even mammalia or birds; but in amphibia, fresh-water fishes, and insects the case is different, all these classes furnishing examples of the same families or genera inhabiting the temperate parts of both continents. But the fact that such cases are confined to these three groups and to plants, is the strongest possible proof that they are not due to landconnection; for all these organisms may be transmitted across the ocean in various ways. Violent storms of wind, floating ice, drift-wood, and aquatic birds, are all known to be effective means for the distribution of these animals or their ova, and the seeds of plants. All of them too, it must be noted, are to a considerable degree patient of cold; the reverse being the case with true reptiles and land-birds, which are essentially heatloving; so that the whole body of facts seems to point rather to an extension of the Antarctic lands and islands reducing the width of open sea, than to any former union, or even close approximation of the Australian and South American continents.

Summary and Conclusion.

Let us now briefly review the conclusions at which we have arrived. If we look back to remote Tertiary times, we shall probably find that all our great continents and oceans were then in existence, and even bore a general resemblance to the forms and outlines now so familiar to us. But in many details, and especially in their amount of communication with each other, we should observe important changes. The first thing we should notice would be a more complete separation of the northern and the southern continents. Now, there is only one completely detached southern land-Australia; but at that pe Africa and South America were also vast islands or archipelagos, completely separated from their sister continents. Examining them more closely, we should observe that the great Euro-Asiatic continent had a considerable extension to the south-east, over what are now the shallow seas of Japan, China, and Java. In the south-west it would include Northern Africa, the Mediterranean then forming two inland seas; while to the west and north-west it would include the British Isles, and perhaps extend even to Iceland and Greenland. As a balance to these extensions, much of Northern Siberia and North-Western Asia may have been under water; the peninsula of India would be an island with a considerable south-west extension over what are now the Laccadive and Maldive coral-reefs. The Himalayas would be a moderate range of hills; the great desert plateau of Central Asia a fertile plain; the greater part of the continent would enjoy a tropical or sub

tropical climate, while even the extreme north would support a luxuriant vegetation. This great continent would abound in animal life, and would be especially remarkable for its mammalia, which would comprise ancestral forms of all our existing higher types, along with a number of those lower grades of organisation (such as lemurs and opossums) now found chiefly in the southern hemisphere.

Connected with this continent by what is now Behring Straits and the Sea of Kamschatka, we should find North America, perhaps somewhat diminished in the east, but more extensive in the south and north, and abounding as now with great inland lakes which were situated to the west of the present lake district. This continent seems to have had a less tropical climate and vegetation than prevailed in the eastern hemisphere, but it supported an almost equally varied though very distinct fauna. Ancestral horses no larger than dogs; huge tapir-like and pig-like animals; strange forms allied to rhinoceroses; the Dinocerata-huge horned animals allied to elephants and to generalised Ungulata; and the Tillodontia, still more unlike anything now living, since they combined characters now found separated in the carnivora, the Ungulata, and the rodents. Ancestral Primates, allied to both the lemurs and the South American monkeys, also inhabited this continent.

The great land masses of the northern hemisphere thus appear to have possessed between them all the higher types of animal life; and these seem to have been developed for a time in one continent and then to have been in part transferred by migration to the other, where alone they have sometimes maintained themselves.

Thus, the elephants and the camels appear to have descended from what were once exclusively American types, while the opossums were as certainly European. Many groups, however, never passed out of the continent in which they originated—the civets, hyænas, and the giraffes being wholly castern, while the Orcodontida and Brontotheridae were no less exclusively western.

South America seems to have been united to the northern continent once at least in Secondary or early Tertiary times, since it was inhabited in the Eocene period by many forms of mammalia, such as rodents, felines, and some ancient forms of Ungulata. It must also have possessed the ancestors of the Edentata (though they have not yet been discovered), or we should not find such a variety of strange and gigantic forms of this order in later Tertiary deposits in this part of the world only. During the greater part of the Tertiary period, therefore, South America must have been separated from the North and protected from incursions of the higher forms of mammalia which were there so abundant. Thus only does it seem possible to understand the unchecked development of so many large but comparatively helpless animals as the Edentata of the Pampas and the Brazilian caves-a development only comparable with that of the Australian marsupials, still more completely shut off from all competition with higher forms of life.

In Africa the evidence of a long period of insulation is somewhat more complex and less casily apparent, but, it seems to me, equally conclusive. We have first, the remarkable fauna of Madagascar, in which lemurs and insectivora predominate, with a few low forms of

carnivora; but none of the higher animals, such as apes, antelopes, buffaloes, rhinoceroses, elephants, lions, leopards, and hyænas, which swarm on the continent. The separation of Madagascar from Africa must therefore have occurred before these important groups existed there. Now, we know that all these large animals lived in Europe and Asia during late Miocene times, while lemurs are only known there during the Eocene period, and were probably more abundant in late Mesozoic times. It is almost certain, therefore, that Southern Africa must have been cut off from Europe and Asia during the whole intervening period, or the same development of high forms and extinction of low would have gone on in the one country as in the other. The persistence of a number of low and isolated types in South and West Africa, which are probably a remnant of the ancient fauna of the country, is also favourable to this view. At the time we are considering, therefore, we look upon tropical and South Africa, with Madagascar, as forming a completely isolated land or archipelago; while the Seychelles and Chagos banks, with Bourbon and Mauritius, perhaps, formed another island or group permanently separated from the larger masses. The extra-tropical portion of South Africa was also probably more extensive, affording an area in which its remarkable flora was being developed.

Turning to Australia, we should probably find it, at this remote period, more extensive than it is now, including in its area New Guinea and some of the adjacent islands, as well as Tasmania; while another extensive land probably occupied the site of the New Zealand group. It may be considered certain that,

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