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The fact, discovered by the above lists, that so many intimate affinities of 

 the fauna of the moderate depths of the Indian Seas are with the North 

 Atlantic fauna, is so singular as, of itself, to be sufficient to suggest a direct 

 sea connexion, in the past, between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and the 

 cases of Caryophyllia communis and Flabellum laciniatum would indicate that 

 the connexion was by way of the Mediterranean. 



Now such a conclusion is in perfect accord with the conclusions of 

 Geology ; for there seems to be strong geological evidence (1) that at or about 

 those Tertiary times when Flabellum laciniatum and Caryophyllia communis 

 lived in the Mediterranean Sea, that sea was in open communication with the 

 West Indian Seas, and also probably extended eastwards as far as Northern 

 Persia and the Red Sea ; * and (2) that, at some early part of Tertiary time, 

 seas extended from Europe across the Sahara and Arabia far into India. t 



Moreover more than one zoologist has noticed affinities between certain 

 elements of the existing fauna of the Mediterranean and of Oriental Seas and 

 has sought to account for such affinities by a direct open-sea connexion. 



For instance, Dr. Gtinther many years ago discovered the existence of 

 marked affinities between the fish-fauna of the Mediterranean Sea and neigh- 

 bouring Atlantic waters and that on the one hand of Japan and that on the 

 other hand of the West Indies. References to these interesting affinities are 

 frequent in his writings ; and in the Introduction to the Study of Fishes, 

 p. 270, he says, in comparing the shore-fishes of Japan with those of the 

 Mediterranean, " we can only account for the singular distribution of these 

 shore-fishes by assuming that the Mediterranean and Japanese Seas were in 

 direct and open communication with each other within the period of the exist- 

 ence of the present Teleosteous Eauna." 



* Suess, chapter on the Mediterranean, in Dos Antlitz der Erde. See also J. W. Gregory, Quarterly Journal 

 of the Geol. Soc. Vol. li., August, 1895, pp. 255-310. 



t Sness, chapter on the Remains of the Indian Continent, in Das Antlitz der Erde. 

 I refer to the French translation of Suess's book, by De Margerie. 



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