354 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 



The tkree chief Mascarene Islands have had their original Fauna 

 so largely destroyed by colonization (see Extermination) that its 

 peculiarities can hardly yet be accurately judged, and that chiefly 

 from remains which, if not strictly fossil, have been recovered from 

 the earth. Maimtius and Reunion, better known by its older name 

 Bourbon, lying within sight of each other, and possessing about the 

 same number of existing species, seem to have not more than three 

 Land-birds in common, and there is one genus, OxYNOTUS, peculiar 

 to these two islands and represented in each by a distinct species. 

 Reunion had also, Avithin the memory of men yet living, two peculiar 

 genera, a Parrot, Mascarinus, and Fregilupiis, perhaps allied to Falculia 

 of Madagascar, and still more nearly to Necropsar of Rodriguez. 

 The Avifauna of this last and remote island has been so reduced 

 that it has left only 3 species of native Land -birds ; these are 

 all peculiar, one being the Parrakeet, Palaearnis exsul before men- 

 tioned (p. 218) as being on the verge of extinction, and another an 

 aberrant form of Drymceca, pointing possibly to a common origin 

 with Indian species. The Land-birds of Seychelles which have not 

 been introduced are 16 in number, and of these 14, according to 

 Sir Edward Newton,^ are peculiar, but there is perhaps not one 

 good genus that may be so termed. Taken as a whole, we cannot 

 but be struck with the force of the evidence as to the land-connexion 

 which seems to have once existed — though not necessarily all at 

 once — between the various units forming the whole Subregion. 

 Even the scanty remnant that is left shews how the denizens of 

 its most distant parts represent one another, a clear token of 

 their long-continued isolation and the working of a differentiating 

 force. 



But before leaving this area reference must be made to an 

 hypothesis which has obtained considerable support in various 

 quarters, and has been accepted as an easy solution of a difficult 

 problem. By dwelling on the peculiarities of the Fauna of Mada- 

 gascar, regarding it as perfectly distinct from that of Africa, and 

 looking to the fact that in that island are collected in great abund- 

 ance the chief forms of those Mammals kno^vn as Lemui's, belonsrinir 

 to the Suborder Frosimia}, while another group of the same Sub- 

 order occupies the Indo-Malay Islands, the idea was conceived of 

 there having once been not only a land-connexion between those 

 countries, but that they must be the relics of a vast continent now 

 submerged, to which the name of "Lemuria"was assigned, and 

 it has been counted as one of the primary Regions of the earth's 

 surface. The fallacy of the argument on behalf of this conjecture 

 has been exposed by Mr. Wallace, who has not only shewn that 

 the hypothesis of a Lemurian continent was alike unnecessary to 



^ "List of the Birds of the Mascarene Islands, including the Seychelles," 

 Trans. Norf. and Xonv. Nat. Soc. iv. pp. 548-554. 



