l89 6 NOTES AND COMMENTS. 223 



It is interesting to note that Dr. Scharff traces nearly all the 

 mammals he discusses to an ancestral home in Central or South- 

 western Asia. Only a few — as the reindeer and the varying hare — 

 are believed by him to have originated in the high north. Maps of 

 the Mediterranean area, as it is supposed to have been at the time of 

 the migration of the animals into Western Europe, show a continuous 

 land-connection from Spain through Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Sardinia 

 and Corsica, Sicily, Southern Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor, while a 

 Saharan sea communicates with the Mediterranean across Tripoli. 

 The Black Sea joins the Caspian, the Caucasus and the Crimea being 

 united by an isthmus. 



Turning to the broader relations of the European fauna, Dr. 

 Scharff advocates a Holarctic Region as defined by Dr. Hart Merriam 

 (see Natural Scienxe, vol. v., pp. 53-57; July, 1894). The Holarctic 

 fauna is shown to have much greater affinity with the Oriental than 

 with the Ethiopian; many types now characteristically African are 

 believed to have originated in the Oriental Region. 



Meanwhile Mr. C. Hedley has been working at similar problems 

 at the Antipodes (Pvoc. R. Soc. N.S.W., 1895, and Ann. Mag. Nat. 

 Hist., 1896, pp. 1 13-120). While feeling bound to admit the affinity 

 between the animals and plants of the far southern lands, he does not 

 consider that the facts will bear so heavy a superstructure as the 

 antarctic continent advocated by Mr. H. O. Forbes (Natural Science, 

 vol. iii., pp. 54-7 ; July, 1893). Mr. Hedley rejects also Professor 

 Hutton's Pacific Bridge from Chili to New Zealand, on the strong 

 ground that the intermediate islands show no South American affini- 

 ties. His own explanation is, "that during the Mesozoic or older 

 Tertiary, a strip of land with a mild climate extended across the South 

 Pole from Tasmania to Tierra del Fuego, and that Tertiary New 

 Zealand reached sufficiently near to this antarctic land without 

 joining it, to receive by flight or drift many plants and animals." He 

 therefore takes a middle position between the continent-builders and 

 the stern, unbending advocates of the permanence of oceans. Mr. 

 Hedley's caution is a virtue that needs imitation by many recent 

 advocates of "Antarctica," who have mingled with the valid reasons 

 for their belief many that are untenable and contradictory. They are 

 too apt to misapprehend or to ignore the evidence of palaeontology, 

 and do not recognise the inadequacy of most of the evidence supplied 

 by groups whose past history is unknown. In these speculations, 

 moreover, the time-element is too often neglected. To prove a 

 former land-connection between distant continents, the occurrence in 

 both areas of a number of more or less related animals and plants is 

 cited ; but these common forms may include flightless birds clearly 

 of recent origin, mammals of early Cainozoic type, fish and reptiles 

 of undoubted Mesozoic affinities, and invertebrates that may be of 

 still remoter antiquity. Now, granting a former land-connection — 

 when did it exist ? Was it of Jurassic, Cretaceous, Eocene, or even 



