ANNIVERSAKT ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 95 



Numerous cases of affinity between Mascarene and Oriental 

 insects have been noticed, and there are similar alliances amongst 

 the plants, but it is impossible to enter into these. There can be 

 no question that the Mascarene fauna and flora, taken as a whole, 

 with the exception of the land-mammalia, contains a well-marked 

 Oriental element. This has never been questioned, but it has been 

 urged, with much force, that the presence of this element may be ac- 

 counted for without its necessarily involving land- connexion between 

 India and Madagascar. It is, however, admitted that the existence 

 at a late Tertiary epoch of large intermediate islands is essential. 



If, however, any geological evidence can be produced in favour of 

 the view that the Indian Ocean, between India and South Africa, 

 was bridged by land before either country was inhabited by pla- 

 cental, or perhaps by any mammalia, it is, I think, clear that all 

 the peculiar relationships of the Mascarene Islands would be satis- 

 factorily explained. I think that the requisite geological evidence 

 does exist. In the first place, attention must be called to the 

 remarkable flora that extended from Australia to India and South 

 Africa in Upper Palaeozoic times. No doubt until very recently the 

 principal European palaeontologists refused to admit that this flora 

 was Palaeozoic, and even now the statement is occasionally made 

 that the Carboniferous * flora of northern lands had a world-wide 

 range. Eut the mass of evidence now available to show that the 

 Newcastle flora of Australia and the Damuda-Talchir flora of India 

 are really Upper Palaeozoic, despite the absence of European palaeo- 

 zoic plants and the presence of what are, in Europe, Mesozoic types, 

 is so clear that I feel sure any geologist who will examine the question 

 will be convinced of its truth. In Australia the facts have long been 

 perfectly well known, but in India they have only recently been fully 

 cleared up, chiefly by the progress of discovery in the Salt Range of 

 the Punjab. In South Africa the evidence is less perfect, though 

 some important additions to our knowledge have resulted from Dr. 

 Feistmantel's examination of the fossil p]auts, the account of which 

 he has been so good as to send to me. In this account, which only 

 reached me two days since, the representation of the peculiar 

 Damuda flora of India in South Africa is shown to be beyond 

 question, and much more complete than has hitherto been supposed. 



Now this flora is so strongly contrasted with the Carboniferous 

 flora of Europe that it is difficult to conceive that the countries in 

 which the two grew can have been in connexion, and the hypothesis 



* In the following remarks, Carboniferous must be understood to include 

 Permian. 



