286 ZOOLOGICAL GEOGRAPHY. [PART. III. 
and west, we find, along with much that is peculiar, a number of 
genera showing a decided Oriental, and others with an equally 
strong South American affinity ; this latter more particularly show- 
ing itself among reptiles and insects. 2. All over Africa, but more 
especially in the east, we have abundance of large ungulates and 
felines—antelopes, giraffes, buffaloes, elephants, and rhinoceroses, 
with lions, leopards, and hyenas, all of types now or recently 
found in India and Western Asia. 3. But we also have to note 
the absence of a number of groups which abound in the above- 
named countries, such as deer, bears, moles, and true pigs ; while 
camels and goats—characteristic of the desert regions just to 
the north of the Ethiopian—are equally wanting. 4. There is 
a wonderful unity of type and want of speciality in the vast 
area of our first sub-region extending from Senegal across to the 
east coast, and southward to the Zambezi; while West Africa and 
South Africa each abound in peculiar types. 5. We have the 
extraordinary fauna of Madagascar to account for, with its 
evident main derivation from Africa, yet wanting all the larger 
and higher African forms; its resemblances to Malaya and to 
South America; and its wonderful assemblage of altogether 
peculiar types. 
Here we find a secure starting-point, for we are sure that 
Madagascar must have been separated from Africa before the 
assemblage of large animals enumerated above, had entered 
it. Now, it is a suggestive fact, that all these belong to types 
which abounded in Europe and India about the Miocene period. 
It is also known, from the prevalence of Tertiary deposits over 
the Sahara and much of Arabia, Persia, and Northern India, 
that during early Tertiary times a continuous sea from the Bay 
of Bengal to the British Isles completely cut off all land com- 
munication between Central and Southern Africa on the one 
side, and the great continent of the Eastern hemisphere on the 
other. When Africa was thus isolated, its fauna probably had a 
character somewhat analogous to that of South America at the 
same period. Most of the higher types of mammalian life were 
absent, while lemurs, Edentates, and Insectivora took their place. 
At this period Madagascar was no doubt united with Africa, 
