Seat eS ee a 
TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 875 
tion, their flora, fauna, and the physiognomy of the people who inhabit them. To 
’ this general statement there are two exceptions, namely, Palestine, which belongs 
rather to the tropical countries lying to the east of it, and so may be dismissed 
from our subject, and the Sahara, which stretches to the south of the Atlantic 
region—or region of the Atlas—but approaches the sea at the Syrtis, and again 
to the eastward of the Cyrenaica, and in which Egypt is merely a long oasis on 
either side of the Nile. 
The Mediterranean region is the emblem of fertility and the cradle of civilisa- 
tion, while the Sahara—Egypt, of course, excepted—is the traditional panther’s 
skin of sand, dotted here and there with oases, but always representing sterility and 
barbarism, The sea is in no sense, save a political one, the limit between them; it is 
a mere gulf, which, now bridged by steam, rather unites than separates the two 
shores. Civilisation never could have existed if this inland sea had not formed the 
junction between the three surrounding continents, rendering the coasts of each 
easily accessible whilst modifying the climate of its shores. 
The Atlas range is a mere continuation of the South of Europe. It is a long 
strip of mountain land, about 200 miles broad, covered with splendid forests, 
fertile valleys, and in some places arid steppes, stretching eastward from the ocean 
to which it has given its name. The highest point is in Morocco, forming a 
pendant to the Sierra Nevada of Spain; thence it runs, gradually decreasing in 
height, through Algeria and Tunisia, it becomes interrupted in Tripoli, and it ends 
in the beautiful ereen hills of the Cyrenaica, which must not be confounded with 
the oases of the Sahara, but is an island detached from the eastern spurs of the 
Atlas, in the ocean of the desert. 
In the eastern part the flora and fauna do not essentially differ from those of 
Italy ; in the west they resemble those of Spain; one of the noblest of the Atlantic 
conifers, the Abies pirsapo, is found also in the Iberian peninsula and nowhere else 
in the world, and the valuable alfa grass or esparto (Stepa tenacissima), from which 
a great part of our paper is now made, forms one of the principal articles of export 
from Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli. On both sides of 
the sea the former plant is found on the highest and most inaccessible mountains, 
amongst snows which last during the greater part of the year, and the latter from 
the sea level to an altitude of 5,000 feet, but in places where the heat and drought 
would kill any other plant, and in undulating land where water cannot lodge. 
Of the 3,000 plants found in Algeria by far the greater number are natives of 
Southern Europe, and less than 100 are peculiar to the Sahara. The macchie or 
maquis of Algeria in no way differs from that of Corsica, Sardinia, and other 
places ; it consists of lentisk, arbutus, myrtle, cistus, tree-heath, and other Mediter- 
ranean shrubs. If we take the commonest plant found on the southern shores of 
the Mediterranean, the dwarf palm (Chamerops humilis), we see at once how 
intimately connected is the whole Mediterranean region, with the exception of the 
localities I have before indicated. This palm still grows spontaneously in the south 
of Spain and in some parts of Provence, in Corsica, Sardinia, and the Tuscan Archi- 
pelago, in Calabria and the Ionian Islands, on the continent of Greece, and in 
several of the islands in the Levant, and it has only disappeared from other coun- 
tries as the land has been brought under regular cultivation. On the other hand, 
it occurs neither in Palestine, Egypt, nor in the Sahara. 
The presence of European birds may not prove much, but there are mammalia, 
fish, reptiles, and insects common to both sides of the Mediterranean. Some of 
the larger animals, such as the lion, panther, jackal, &c., have disappeared before 
the march of civilisation in the one continent, but have lingered, owing to 
Mohammedan barbarism, in the other. There is abundant evidence of the former 
existence of these and of the other large mammals, which now characterise tropical 
Africa, in France, Germany, and Greece ; it is probable that they only migrated 
to their present habitat after the upheaval of the great sea which in Eocene times 
stretched from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, making Southern Africa an island 
continent like Australia. The original fauna of Africa, of which the lemur is the 
distinctive type, is still preserved in Madagascar, which then formed part of it. 
The fish fauna is naturally the most conclusive evidence as to the true line of 
381432 
