Liber ia ^ 



numerous bird types (parrots and barbets), the bolne snakes, 

 and certain fishes, insects, and spiders may have reached South 

 America from Africa ; while by the same route travelled to 

 Africa from South America hyraxes, hares and rabbits (?), 

 octodont rodents, insectivores, edentates, the ancestral types of 

 some birds (secretary vulture and other Raptores^ Gallinace^, 

 Ratites such as the ostrich and iEpyornis), a few reptiles, beetles, 

 and families of plants common only in their known distribution 

 to South America, Africa, and Madagascar. That some of 

 these forms strayed just beyond the African region into Southern 

 Europe or Western Asia does not militate against their having 

 originated in South America and having reached Europe or Asia 

 via Africa. The best test in the case of each genus, family, 

 or order is their occurrence or non-occurrence in the Eocene 

 fossil fauna of North America. If they are represented in that 

 region and in Europe or Asia also it might be supposed that they 

 had reached or quitted the Old World by the circumpolar land 

 bridges (Behring's Straits or the Greenland-Iceland route) and 

 not by the Eocene bridge which may have anciently connected 

 Western Africa with Northern Brazil. It is believed that this land 

 connection across the Equatorial Atlantic did not persist later 

 than the end of the Eocene — the first period of the Tertiary 

 epoch. 



Printed by Hazell, Watson &■ Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 



