334 Dr. G. Hartlaub on the Avifauna of 



XXVII. — General Remarks on the Avifduna of Madagascar 

 and the Mascarene Islands. By Dr. G. Hartlaub^. 



FivE-ANi)-THiRTY ycars ago, Isidore Geoffroy St.-IIilaire 

 remarked that, ii' one had to classify the Island of Madagas- 

 car exclusively on zoological considerations, and without re- 

 ference to its geographical situation, it could be shown to be 

 neither Asiatic nor African, but quite different from either, 

 and almost a fourth continent. And this fourth continent 

 could be further proved to be, as regards its fauna, much 

 more different from Africa, which lies so near to it, than from 

 India, which is so far away. With these words, the correct- 

 ness and pregnancy of which later investigations tend to bring 

 into their full light, the French naturalist first stated the 

 interesting problem for the solution of which an hypothesis 

 based on scientific knowledge has recently been propounded ; 

 for this fourth continent of Isidore Geoffroy is Sclatcr's 

 "Lemuria^^ — that sunken land which, containing parts of 

 Africa, must have extended far eastwards over Southern 

 India and Ceylon, and the highest points of which we recog- 

 nize in the volcanic peaks of Bourlion and Mauritius, and in 

 the central range of Madagascar itself — the last resorts of the 

 mostly extinct Lcmurine race which formerly peopled it. 

 " The Farquhar Islands and the Seychelles in the north and 

 the Coral-reef of Rodriguez and Calvados seem,^^ says a re- 

 cent writer, " to unite the ranges of its granitic hills with the 

 Laccadivcs and Maldives and so on, with those mighty mani- 

 festations of Nature which the Neilgherrics and adjoining 

 ranges present to us in Southern India.^^ When Wallace, 

 whoso utterances on this subject every one must read with 

 the greatest interest, puts forward a former junction of Mada- 



* Aljstracted from the introduction to Dr. Ilartlaub's new work * Die 

 Vogel Madagascars und der bonachbarten Insolgi'uppeu,' announced in our 

 last issue (anten, p. 258). These remarks give a summary of Dr. Ilart- 

 laub's conclusions as to the general aspect of the " Lemurian " Avifauna, 

 which according to this excellent and most useful handbook, is now known 

 to contain 284 species. Of the 220 species found in Madagascar itself, 

 104 are peculiar, and of these .30 so abnormal that they require to bo re- 

 ferred to peculiar genera. 



