PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 341 
is, as Wallace and Blandford have shown, several striking 
faunal resemblances between Ceylon and the Southern 
Deccan on the one hand, and the Malay islands on the 
other, and marked differences between Ceylon and the 
northern part of the Indian peninsula. It was even sug- 
gested by Wallace, and at one time by Blandford, that a 
direct land bridge connected Ceylon and Malayia; but 
Blandford has, more recently, shown this to be unnecessary. 
It appears that Ceylon must have become isolated from 
the more easterly portions of the Oriental region at a com- 
paratively early date, and thus served as a harbour’of refuge 
for the Cryptodrilids, just as Australia did in the south. 
The two lands are the terminals of two lines of migration. 
At a subsequent period, in this Oriental region, Megascolex 
gave rise to Pheretima, which spread over the southern por- 
tion of Asia, and made its way northwards into China and 
Japan, and peopled the Malay Archipelago. But this evo- 
lution of Pheretima must have occurred after the formation 
of Torres Straits, otherwise we should find representatives 
of the genus in, at any rate, Queensland. The genus Phere- 
tama appears to have originated contemporaneously with the 
Placental mammals. 
Summary. 
Let me briefly summarise the conclusions to which we 
have arrived. 
In the first place, the earthworms, as a group, are not by 
any means so ancient as their anatomy seems to indicate. 
From the fact that, at the present time, they are found to 
be constantly associated with angiospermous plants, we may 
estimate their origin from what we know of the geological 
history of these. The earliest fossils, possibly attributable 
to angiosperms, occur in the middle of the Mesozoic, but we 
do not meet with undoubted or relatively abundant remains 
of angiosperms till the Cretaceous period. 
It seems to be impossible for earthworms, as we know 
them now, to exist without a fair amount of nutritious vege- 
table soil; they appear to have developed pari passu with 
the higher plants; and we may place the ancestral earth- 
worm somewhere in the late Jurassic period. 
This ancestral form. was an Acanthodrilid, possibly some- 
what like Notiodrilus, which is, anyhow, one of the most 
archaic genera existing. MWotiodrilus persists in the 
southernmost regions of the world, and there is reason to 
believe that the centre of distribution. if not of origin, was 
in the “ Melanesian Plateau.” 
