ASSERTED OCCURRENCE OF MASTODON IN AUSTRALIA. 271 



Tapirus Malayanus, Styloceros Muntjac, Ncemorhceclus Suma- 

 trensis, Ursus Malayanus, &c, the majority of which range as 

 far north as Pegu, or further. 1 That the Indian Elephant 

 should have participated in the same common range is thus 

 relieved from any plea of improbability ; while the specula- 

 tion that Sumatra was in direct continuity with Ceylon 

 within the period of the existing fauna is beset with insur- 

 mountable difficulties. In the view here taken it is also 

 needless, since the species may have spread southwards from 

 a common centre, on both sides of the Bay of Bengal, and on 

 its eastern shore into the promontory which formerly forked 

 the Indian Ocean. The speculation here controverted 

 appears to rest upon grounds as fallacious as those which led 

 De Blainville, mainly upon spurious Proboscidean evidence, 

 to conjecture that Australia was formerly a dependency of 

 the American continent. 2 



§ 10. Asserted Occurrence op Mastodon in Australia. 



Next to the Equidw, the Proboscideans are among the 

 most cosmopolitan and widely distributed of Ungulate Mam- 

 malia. Dinotherium occurs alike in the Miocene deposits of 

 India and Europe ; while species of Mastodon and Elephant, 

 extinct or living, have been found over the whole surface of 

 Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in both divisions of the 

 American Continent. On the other hand, as has often been 

 remarked before, Australia has a living fauna, so low and 

 backward in the scale of organization, that it has struck 

 those who have reflected on it in the light of being an 

 arrested fragment of an older world, in which progress was 

 suspended, whilst in the other continents it was being 

 steadily sustained by the appearance of higher and higher 

 forms. With the exception of the Dingo, which is believed 

 to have accompanied man, 3 and of a certain number of in- 

 digenous Rats, the existing mammalian fauna of Australia 

 is exclusively restricted to marsupial forms. The extinct 

 fauna, which has been so ably investigated by Professor 

 Owen, so far as it goes, bears the same character. The 



1 Cantor, ' Journ. Asiat. Soc. of Ben- 

 gal,' 1846, vol. xv. p. 27-5. 



• Osteographie : ' Dinotherium : ' p. 

 50. 



3 Prof. McCoy, in a recent comparison 



Macropus Titan, and of recent species 

 of Hypsiprymnus and Hydromys. He 

 infers from this and other arguments 

 that the Dingo is an indigenous animal. 

 But there is no evidence that man may 

 between the ancient and modern natural not have then been an inhabitant of 

 history of Victoria, states that he had ' Australia, and the Dingo introduced 

 identified remains of the Cants Dingo in \ along with him. The latter still stands 

 the bone-caverns lately opened beneath j out, a symbol of isolation (Annals and 

 the basalt-flows at Mount Macedon. Mag. of Nat. Hist. 1862, 3d Ser. vol. 

 They woro found associated with those of ' ix. pp. 145, 147). 



