IV.] PUERCO FAUNA. 153 



"when South Africa was united to India via Madagascar on one 

 side, and to South America on the other, especially if the Indo- 

 Malay continent was also connected with the Australian, there 

 may have been a girdle of land, chiefly in low latitudes, round 

 nearly three-quarters of the earth's circumference from Peru to 

 New Zealand and the Fiji Islands." The vertebrate testimony 

 does not, however, countenance the idea that such southern land 

 was cut off from Europe and northern Asia by sea. It is true 

 that the evidence in favour of such an isolation is afforded by the 

 identity of the Carboniferous (Damuda-Talchir) floras of Australia, 

 South Africa, Peninsular India, and Central Argentina 1 , and their 

 total dissimilarity from those of Europe, Northern Asia, and North 

 America ; and it is suggested that the same conditions may have 

 prevailed during the Jurassic 2 . This, however, the vertebrate 

 evidence certainly does not support ; and hence, while admitting 

 the isolation of a great southern (subtropical) continent during 

 the Palaeozoic era, it appears probable that since that epoch most 

 of the southern lands have been from time to time more or less 

 closely connected with those to the north 3 . 



Leaving these difficult problems with the foregoing remarks, 

 we pass on to notice briefly the Puerco mammalian 



Puerco Fauna. 



fauna of the United States, which, together with the 

 approximately equivalent Cernaysian fauna of Europe, is of especial 

 interest as showing a transition between the Cretaceous and 

 Tertiary. As we have already said, this fauna includes several 

 representatives of the multituberculates, which are essentially a 

 Secondary group, and one of which is common to the Cernaysian 

 fauna. In addition to these, four orders of eutherian mammals are 

 represented, namely the Primates, the Carnivora, the Ungulata, 

 and the extinct group known as the Tillodontia. It is, however, 

 very noteworthy that in all these orders it is only the lowest 

 sections that were in existence during the Puerco epoch. Thus 



1 See F. Kurtz, Rev. Mus. La Plata, Vol. vi. p. 117, and Rec. Geol. Surv. 

 India, Vol. xxvni. p. in (1895). 



2 Appendix, No. 8, p. 96. 



3 Dr Blanford writes to me that he believes the Palaeozoic connection be- 

 tween South America and South Africa was tropical or subtropical, rather than 

 antarctic, and hence that "the evidence for an antarctic continent in upper 

 Mesozoic or Tertiary times is very slight indeed." 



