XI 



PALJiONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION 371 



have equally vanished from its present fauna ; 

 and in Northern India, the African types of Hippo- 

 potamuses, Giraffes, and Elephants were mixed 

 up with what are now the Asiatic ty^es of the 

 latter, and with Camels, and Semnopithecine and 

 Pithecine Apes of no less distinctly Asiatic forms. 

 In fact the Miocene mammalian fauna of 

 Europe and the Himalayan regions contains, asso- 

 ciated together, the types which are at present 

 separately located in the South- African and 

 Indian sub-provinces of Arctogsea. Now there 

 is every reason to believe, on other grounds, that 

 both Hindostan, south of the Ganges, and Africa, 

 south of the Sahara, were separated by a wide 

 sea from Europe and North Asia during the 

 Middle and Upper Eocene epochs. Hence it 

 becomes highly probable that the well-known 

 similarities, and no less remarkable differences 

 between the present Faunae of India and South 

 Africa have arisen in some such fashion as the 

 following. Some time during the Miocene epoch, 

 possibly when the Himalayan chain was ele- 

 vated, the bottom of the nummulitic sea was 

 upheaved and converted into dry land, in the 

 direction of a line extending from Abyssinia to 

 the mouth of the Ganges. By this means, the 

 Dekhan on the one hand, and South Africa on 

 the other, became connected with the Miocene 

 dry land and with one another. The Miocene 

 mammals spread gradually over this intermediate 



