that Madagascar is "more nearly related to the
Ethiopian than to any other region," and that its fauna was evidently
"mainly derived from Africa."

But the absence of the numerous peculiar groups of African birds is so
exactly parallel to the same phenomenon among mammals, that we are
justified in imputing it to the same cause, the more especially as some of
the very groups that are wanting--the plantain-eaters and the trogons, for
example,--are actually known to have inhabited Europe along with the large
mammalia which subsequently migrated to Africa. As to the peculiarly
Eastern genera--such as Copsychus and Hypsipetes, with a Dicrurus, a
Ploceus, a Cisticola, and a Scops, all closely allied to Indian or Malayan
species--although very striking to the ornithologist, they certainly do not
outweigh the fourteen African genera found in Madagascar. Their presence
may, moreover, be accounted for more satisfactorily than by means of an
ancient Lemurian continent, which, even if granted, would not explain the
very facts adduced in its support.

Let us first prove this latter statement.

The supposed "Lemuria" must have existed, if at all, at so remote a period
that the higher animals did not then inhabit either Africa or Southern
Asia, and it must have {424} become partially or wholly submerged before
they reached those countries; otherwise we should find in Madagascar many
other animals besides Lemurs, Insectivora, and Viverridae, especially such
active arboreal creatures as monkeys and squirrels, such hardy grazers as
deer or antelopes, or such wide-ranging carnivores as foxes or bears. This
obliges us to date the disappearance of the hypothetical continent about
the earlier part of the Miocene epoch at latest, for during the latter part
of that period we know that such animals existed in abundance in every part
of the great northern continents wherever we have found organic remains.
But the Oriental birds in Madagascar, by whose presence Dr. Hartlaub
upholds the theory of a Lemuria, are slightly modified forms of _existing
Indian genera_, or sometimes, as Dr. Hartlaub himself points out, _species
hardly distinguishable from those of India_. Now all the evidence at our
command leads us to conclude that, even if these genera and species were in
existence in the early Miocene period, they must have had a widely
different distribution from what they have now. Along with so many African
and Indian genera of mammals they then p