MAMMALIAN FAFIiA OF THE VAL D ARNO. 7 



amphibians, and reptiles, a closer relation with ]S"orth Africa than 

 with peninsular Italy. 



On the other hand, we have no right to postulate, as a matter of 

 course, an agreement in the climate and the general conditions of 

 life where we find an agreement between the animal forms of two 

 distant regions, as Mr. Wallace has shown in several surprising 

 cases*. These facts, deduced from a consideration of the present 

 fauna, lead us to similar conclusions with respect to the fossil 

 faunas. Southern France, on the northern flank of the Pyrenees, 

 and the northern half of Corsica are in the same latitude and have 

 almost the same climate. The mountain regions of both territories 

 were covered with extending glaciers during the Quaternary 

 (Pleistocene) age. And yet what a difference in the Postpliocene 

 mammalian fauna ! In the caves of the south of Prance we meet 

 with circumpolar mammals amongst others. In the breccias of 

 Corsica we meet an animal of Miocene type (Myolagus), belonging 

 to the Hare family, and besides this peculiar forms which have not 

 appeared anywhere else in Europe. 



If we look with this light at the fauna of the Val d'Arno, which 

 we have seen to have been spread over Europe and Asia in Pliocene 

 times, it also seems probable that it extended then as far as Java 

 and Celebes. We doubtless have to thank isolation for the fact that 

 the close relations of the mammalian fauna of the Indian Archi- 

 pelago with those of the Pliocenes are preserved till the present 

 time. 



§ 6. Conclusion. 



A few mammalian species do not always fix the geological age 

 of the bed to which they belong. In the case of the above- 

 mentioned Myolagus sardous of the bone-breccias of Corsica and 

 Sardinia, we have a Miocene animal, found at OEningen, Sansan, 

 Steinheim, and Casino, which has apparently been preserved with- 

 out change in the above islands down to Pleistocene times, and 

 probably also to the jSTeolithic age t. In dealing with the Pliocene 

 mammalia we have shown that several animals have been preserved 

 almost unchanged to the present day ; it may therefore be inferred 

 that they lived, in the Pleistocene age, in areas adjacent to those 

 spots where they now live. In the Sunda Islands, and presumably 

 elsewhere, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish the 

 Pliocene from the Pleistocene fossil mammalia. This may perhaps 

 explain the fact that Elephas meridionalis is associated with a 

 younger fauna on the other side of the Alps than in Italy, although 

 the proof that this species lived in Pleistocene times in France and 

 England, does not seem to me to be sufficient. On the other hand 

 it is accepted by the Austrian geologists and palaeontologists that 

 Mastodon arvernensis appears in Austria and Hungary in a fauna 



* ' Island Life,' pp. 64-67, 370, 371, 375, 378, &c. 



t See Forsyth Major, " Die Tyrrhenis. Studien iiber geographische Verbrei- 

 tung von Thieren und Pflanzen im "westlichen Mittelmeergebiet " (in * Kosmos,' 

 vii. Jahrgang, 1883, p. 697). 



