1874.| Tropical Zoology. 323 
separated by shallow seas is readily explained on such 
supposition. Professor Hartt found reason to believe that 
during the time of the drift, Brazil stood at a much higher 
level than at present. Mr. Alfred Tylor considers that 
during the glacial epoch the level of the sea must have been 
reduced at least 600 feet, an estimate which our author 
extends to 1000. Mr. Wallace, in his work on the Malay 
Archipelago, infers from the distribution of animal life that 
Borneo, Java, and the more western islands of the group 
were at one time connected with each other, and with the 
main land of Asia, while New Guinea and the islands to the 
eastward were joined to Australia. The Cyclopean ruins 
found in certain islets of the Pacific, and utterly out of 
keeping with their present size and population, point in the 
same direction. Easter Island, as the author observes, 
could never have supported the race that reared such 
monuments. But if the present island was once one of a 
chain of hills overlooking wide and populous lowlands—now 
submerged beneath the blue waters of the Pacific—such 
remains become intelligible. 
Mr. Belt’s theory, as we may provisionally call it, furnishes 
the key to a number of ancient traditions on both sides of 
the Atlantic. 
May not the Atlantis of Plato, of Theopompus, and of 
Proclus, finally swallowed up by the sea, have been “that 
great continent in the Atlantic, on which the present West 
Indian Islands were mountains?” The warlike and pre- 
datory character ascribed to its inhabitants by Greek and 
Egyptian story is in full harmony with their probably Carib 
origin. Mr. Belt’s theory throws also a wonderful light upon 
the sagas of a universal deluge current, according to Catlin, 
among one hundred and twenty different tribes of North and 
South America. Those low-lying lands, if they existed at 
all, must have been the refuge during the glacial epoch, not 
merely of the principal forms of vegetable and animal life, 
but of the human race. Whatever civilisation existed must 
have had there its seat. Suppose, now, that the temperature 
of the earth experienced, from some unknown cosmical 
cause, a sudden elevation. The glaciers, or rather the ice- 
caps, resting on the present continents, are suddenly con- 
verted into torrents of water rushing down to the sea. The 
ocean level rapidly rises. Atlantis and all the other 
populous regions of the earth are engulphed. A hundred 
fathoms deep roll the waters over fields and cities, whilst a 
few only of the inhabitants escape in boats or find shelter 
on some lofty mountain. 
