226 GLIMPSES OF THE PAST 



rails hooted and croaked among the reeds, and clouds of large 

 geese and other water-fowl flew screaming over the lakes ; 

 on the sandbanks crocodiles lay by scores basking in the sun ; 

 gr_eat apeJike lemurs, climlped the trees and caught the birds ; 

 troops of river-hogs swam the streams and dug up roots among 

 the woods ; and herds of slender-legged zebu-oxen grazed 

 on the open downs. These were the animals which the first 

 wild men hunted with their palm-bark spears, and shot with 

 their arrows tipped with burnt clay or stone. 3 



And as we look further back through long past geological 

 ages, when the clays and sandstones of the oolite, and the 

 white masses of the chalk were being deposited in the coral- 

 studded tropic seas and archipelagoes of Europe and other 

 parts of the world, and when Madagascar was probably no 

 island, but a peninsula of Eastern Africa, the mist opens for a 

 moment, and we see vast reptile forms dimly through the haze ; 

 great slender-snouted gavials in the streams and lakes, sloths 

 moving slowly along the branches of the trees, and huge 

 dinosaurs, ,sixty to eighty feet Jong, crawling over the 

 wooded plains, and tearing down whole trees with their 

 powerful arms. 



Such are some glimpses of the Madagascar of the past which 

 the study of its rocks and fossils already opens to the mental 

 eye. We may confidently look for further light upon the dim 

 and distant bygone ages as we learn more of the geology of the 

 country. The thick curtain which at present shrouds the old- 

 world times will be yet more fully lifted, and we shall probably, 

 ere many more years have passed, be able to draw many more 

 mental pictures of the extinct animal life of the great African 

 island. 



1 See " Recherches sur les Lemuriens disparus et en parti- 

 culier sur ceux qui vivaient a Madagascar." Par G. Grandidier. 

 Nouv. Arch, du Museum, 4e serie, tome vii., 144 pp. 1905. 

 Also " On Recently Discovered Subf ossil Primates from Mada- 

 gascar." By Herbert F. Standing, D.Sc. Trans. Zool. 5oc., 

 vol. xviii., pt. ii., pp. 59-217. May 1908. 



These extinct lemuroids have been classed in the following 

 genera: Megaladapis (3 sp.), Lemur (2 sp.), Palceopropithecus 

 (4 sp.), Archceolemur (2 sp.), Poradylemur (1 sp.), Hadropithecus 

 (1 sp.), Mesopropithecus (1 sp.), and Archceoindris (1 sp.). 



