CHANGES OF LAND AND WATER. 361 
Thus the Mediterranean at one time was an inland sea, 
when, in the place of the Straits of Gibraltar, an isthmus 
connected Africa with Spaim. England, even during the 
more recent history of the earth, when man already 
existed, has repeatedly been connected with the European 
continent and been repeatedly separated from it. Nay, 
even Europe and North America have been directly 
connected. The South Sea at one time formed a 
large Pacific Continent, and the numerous little islands 
which now lie scattered in it were simply the highest 
peaks of the mountains covering that continent. The 
Indian Ocean formed a continent which extended from 
the Sunda Islands along the southern coast of Asia to 
the east coast of Africa. This large continent of former 
; times Sclater, an Englishman, has called Lemuria, from the 
monkey-like animals which inhabited it, and it is at the 
same time of great importance from being the probable 
eradle of the human race, which in all likelihood here first 
developed out of anthropoid apes. The important proof 
which Alfred Wallace has furnished, by the help of 
chorological facts, that the present Malayan Archipelago 
consists in reality of two completely different divisions, 
is particularly interesting. The western division, the Indo- 
Malayan Archipelago, comprising the large islands of 
Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, was formerly connected by 
Malacca with the Asiatic continent, and probably also with 
the Lemurian continent just mentioned. The eastern 
division, on the other hand, the Austro-Malayan Archipelago, 
comprising Celebes, the Moluccas, New Guinea, Solomon’s 
Islands, etc., was formerly directly connected with Austra- 
lia. Both divisions were formerly two continents separated 
