ANCIENT CLIMATIC ZONES. 223 



It is more than doubtful, however, whether the evidence that 

 we possess is sufficient to prove this position. Were the conditions 

 such as they are claimed, we should naturally look for some cor- 

 respondence between the disposition of the ancient isothermal belts 

 and the existing lines of latitude; but no such disposition ap- 

 pears to have obtained. Dr. Waagen, in his elaborate analysis of 

 the Jurassic cephalopod fauna of Kutch, India, unreservedly ad- 

 mits its much greater affinity with the equivalent fauna of the 

 Central European region than with the Mediterranean, although 

 geographically it is placed in much closer juxtaposition with the 

 former than with the latter. The genera Oppelia and Aspidoceras 

 are here both abundantly developed, and scarcely less so the genus 

 Phylloceras; Lytoceras, on the other hand, is restricted to two 

 species. The fact that Kutch is itself situated only twenty-three 

 degrees from the Equator, and fully twenty degrees to the south of 

 the northern limit of the Mediterranean zone in Europe, is scarcely 

 consistent with any thaory upholding the zonal distribution of 

 oceanic temperature. Neumayr maintains that the elevated tem- 

 perature of the Mediterranean zone was induced by an equatorial 

 current possibly flowing from the southeast, or, at any rate, in open 

 communication with a sea in that quarter; but if this were so, 

 surely the same temperature (and not improbably a considerably 

 higher one) would have affected the Indian basin as well, whereas, 

 on the theory set forth, we have here evidence of just the opposite 

 character i. ., of a lower temperature. Moreover, the evidence 

 obtained from the fossils of Australia and the east coast of Africa 

 seems to point to the conclusion, in the opinion of Dr. Waagen," 

 that very probably "one large Indian Ocean existed during the 

 Jusassic period, of which only the very outskirts have been pre- 

 served up to this day in India, the east coast of Africa and the 

 west coast of Australia existing in nearly the same area as the In- 

 dian Ocean exists at the present time." It can hardly be conceived 

 that colder currents flowing from the north should have so far 

 antagonised the influence of the more southerly heated waters as 

 to have brought about this singular discordance between the Euro- 

 pean and Asiatic faunas. And to make the problem still more 

 intricate, it would appear that a part of the Himalaya Jura, the 

 " Spiti shale," "from the prevalence of the genus Cosmoceras and 

 the large number of AucellaB, " really belongs to the boreal zone. 



