SACRED IBIS. 



CHAPTER I 



General Remarks on Africa and its Fauna 



To the naturalist, and more especially to the palaeontologist, Africa is one of the 

 most interesting continents of the world, not only on account of the peculiarity of 

 the fauna of its central and southern portion, but from the fact that it has existed 

 as land from a very remote geological epoch, namely, from the one known as the 

 Permian, which immediately succeeded the Carboniferous or Coal period of Europe. 



From the Permian and overlying Triassic formations of southern Africa have 

 been obtained the remains of an extensive group of extinct reptiles, which are 

 of exceptional interest on account of the fact that they include types which pass 

 almost imperceptibly into the primitive salamanders, and others which appear 

 undoubtedly to represent the ancestral stock from which mammals have originated. 



At the period when these mammal-like, or anomodont, reptiles flourished 

 Africa appears to have been connected with India by way of Madagascar and the 

 Comoro and Seychelle Islands ; and it is almost certain that somewhere in this 

 vast continent the passage from reptiles to mammals took place ; the probability 

 being that the evolution took place in its southern portion — that is to say, in 



