III.] WEST INDIES. 139 



Here a presumed connection between North and South 

 America by way of the West Indies must be referred to, the 

 evidence in favour of which has been summarised by Dr J. W. 

 Gregory 1 as follows: "It is not at all certain that when the 

 isthmus of Panama was submerged there was a free communica- 

 tion between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Caribbean 

 Sea may then have been a gulf from the Pacific, separated from 

 the Atlantic by the land area of the hypothetical 'Antillia.' That 

 there was once a connection between North and South America 

 along the chain of the Windward Islands, Cuba, the Bahamas, and 

 Florida is not improbable. Evidence for this, either in whole or 

 in part, has been advanced by De Castro and others. Further 

 evidence could be adduced from the study of the land-shells, and 

 also from the remarkable distribution of Peripatus. That Cuba 

 was once connected with Yucatan and Florida is almost certain ; 

 that this connection was in existence in the Pliocene, and probably 

 also in the Plistocene, is shown by the evidence collected by De 

 Castro. That the area of the Windward Islands was occupied by 

 land in the lower Tertiary is also most probable. But this was all 

 submerged at the period when the Oceanic [Miocene] deposits of 

 Barbados were laid down. There is no adequate evidence to 

 show that at any time after this was there more land in this region 

 than there is at present." With regard to the land-shells, Mr 

 A. H. Cooke 2 writes "that a certain number of the characteristic 

 North American genera are found in the Antillean sub-region, 

 indicating a former connection, more or less intimate, between the 

 West Indies and the mainland.... A small amount of South Ameri- 

 can influence is perceptible throughout the Antilles, chiefly in the 

 occurrence of a few species of Bulimulus and Simpulopsis. The 

 South American element may have strayed into the sub-region by 

 three distinct routes : (i) by way of Trinidad, Tobago, and the 

 islands northward ; (2) by a north-westerly extension of Honduras 

 towards Jamaica, forming a series of islands, of which the Rosalind 

 and Pedro banks are perhaps the remains; (3) by a similar 

 approximation of the peninsula of Yucatan and the western 

 extremity of Cuba." This seems to indicate that such Antillean 



1 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. Vol. LI. p. 305 (1895). 



2 Cambridge Natural History Mollusca, pp. 345, 346 (1895). 



