214 THE MALAGASY REGION. [CHAP. 



around the coast, and numerous old lake-basins or marshes, some 

 of very large dimensions, form receptacles where remains of the 

 later faunas have been preserved. With the exception of the 

 Comoro group, which contain a few species, the non-volant mam- 

 malian fauna is confined to Madagascar, so that the other islands 

 do not properly come within the province of the present work. 

 It is, however, important to observe that the Seychelles differ from 

 almost all oceanic islands in consisting largely of granitic and 

 other crystalline rocks. 



In an island lying so close to the African continent as Mada- 

 gascar, the natural assumption would be that, if it 

 fa^ia" 1 " possessed a mammalian fauna at all, such fauna 



would be closely allied to that of the mainland. As 

 a matter of fact, precisely the reverse is the case, and out of a 

 total of fully 28 genera of non-volant mammals now or recently 

 inhabiting the island, only three are common to Africa. This, 

 however, is by no means all, for out of these three genera two 

 {Hippopotamus and Sus] are such as have probably crossed the 

 intervening channel, although at a time when it was narrower than 

 at present, while it is quite possible that the third (Crocidura) may 

 have been introduced by human agency. Even this, however, 

 scarcely gives a true idea of the case. In the first place, not only 

 are the peculiar genera unknown in Africa, but they are equally 

 strange to all the other regions of the world. In the second place, 

 these genera belong to groups which form only a very small por- 

 tion of the existing mammalian fauna of the Ethiopian region. 

 At the present day, as will be more fully indicated in the following 

 chapter, Ethiopian Africa is especially characterised by its nume- 

 rous antelopes, as well by giraffes, zebras, rhinoceroses, elephants, 

 hippopotami, wart-hogs, bush-pigs, lions, leopards and various 

 other large cats, baboons, anthropoid apes, aard-varks, and 

 ostriches. But, with the exception of the aforesaid bush-pig and 

 extinct hippopotamus, not a single representative of any one of 

 these groups is found in Madagascar. In place of such animals, 

 Madagascar is populated by a host of lemurs, so numerous that 

 the number of their species considerably exceeds that of all the 

 other non-volant mammalian inhabitants of the island. Civet- 

 and mungoose-like species, all pertaining to peculiar genera, alone 



