THE MEDITERRANEAN, PHYSICAL AND HISTORICAL. 261 



the exception of the localities I have before indicated This palm still 

 grows spontaneously in the south of Spain, and in some j^arts of Prov- 

 ence, in Corsica, Sardinia, and the Tuscan Archipelago, in Calabria 

 and the Ionian Islands, on the continent of Greece, and in several of 

 the islands in the Levant, and it has only disappeared from other 

 countries as the land has been brought under regular cultivation. On 

 the other hand, it occurs neither in Palestine, Egypt, nor in the Sahara. 



The presence of European birds may not prove much, but there are 

 mammalia, reptiles, iish, and insects common to both sides of the 

 Mediterranean. Some of the larger animals, such as the lion, panther, 

 jackal, etc., have disappeared before the march of civilization in the 

 one continent, but have lingered, owing to Mohammedan barbarism, in 

 the other. There is abundant evidence of the former existence of these 

 and of the other large mammals which now characterize tropical Africa 

 in France, Germany, and Greece. It is probable that they only migrated 

 to their present habitat after the upheaval of the great sea which, in 

 Eocene times, stretched from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, making- 

 southern Africa an island continent like Australia. The original fauna 

 of Africa, of which the lemur is the distinctive type, is still preserved 

 in Madagascar, which then formed part of it. 



The Iish fauna is naturally the most conclusive evidence as to the 

 true line of separation between Europe and Africa. We find the trout 

 in the Atlantic region and in all the snow- fed rivers falling into the 

 Mediterranean; in Spain, Italy, Dalmatia; it occurs in Mount Olym- 

 pus, in rivers of Asia Minor, and even in the Lebanon, but nowhere in 

 Palestine south of that range, in Egypt, or in the Sahara. This fresh- 

 water salmonoid is not exactly the same in all these localities, but is 

 subject to considerable variation, sometimes amounting to specific dis- 

 tinction. Nevertheless it is a European type found in the Atlas, and 

 it is not till we advance into the Sahara, at Tuggurt, that we come to 

 a purely African form in the Chromidae, which have a wide geographical 

 distribution, being found everywhere between that place, the Nile, and 

 Mozambique. 



The presence of newts, tailed batrachians, in every country around 

 the Mediterranean, except again in Palestine, Egypt, and the Sahara, 

 is another example of the continuity of the Mediterranean fauna, even 

 though the species are not the same throughout. 



The Sahara is an immense zone of desert which commences on the 

 shores of the Atlantic Ocean, between the Canaries and Cape de 

 Verde, and traverses the whole of north Africa, Arabia, and Persia, as 

 far as Central Asia. The Mediterranean portion of it may be said 

 roughly to extend between the fifteenth and thirtieth degrees of north 

 latitude. 



This was popularly supposed to have been a vast inland sea in very 

 recent times, but the theory was supported by geological facts wrongly 



