Mesozote Geography 333 
which may be opened anywhere, or like a series of superimposed 
dissolving views of land and sea-scapes. Hence the reconstructed 
maps of Europe, the only continent tolerably known, show a con- 
siderable number of islands in puzzling changes, while elsewhere, 
eg. in Asia, we have to be satisfied with sweeping generalisations. 
At present about half-a-dozen big connections’ are engaging our 
attention, leaving as comparatively settled the extent and the duration 
of such minor “bridges” as that between Africa and Madagascar, 
Tasmania and Australia, the Antilles and Central America, Europe 
and North Africa. 
Connection of South Eastern Asia with Australia. Neumayr’s 
Sino-Australian continent during mid-Mesozoic times was probably a 
much changing Archipelago, with final separations subsequent to the 
Cretaceous period. Henceforth Australasia was left to its own fate, 
but for a possible connection with the antarctic continent. 
Africa, Madagascar, India. The “Lemuria” of Sclater and 
Haeckel cannot have been more than a broad bridge in Jurassic 
times; whether it was ever available for the Lemurs themselves must 
depend upon the time of its duration, the more recent the better, 
but it is difficult to show that it lasted into the Miocene. 
Africa and South America. Since the opposite coasts show an 
entire absence of marine fossils and deposits during the Mesozoic 
period, whilst further north and south such are known to exist and are 
mostly identical on either side, Neumayr suggested the existence of 
a great Afro-South American mass of land during the Jurassic epoch. 
Such land is almost a necessity and is supported by many facts ; it 
would easily explain the distribution of numerous groups of terrestrial 
creatures. Moreover to the north of this hypothetical land, some- 
1 Not a few of those who are fascinated by, and satisfied with, the statistical aspect of 
distribution still have a strong dislike to the use of ‘‘bridges”’ if these lead over deep 
seas, and they get over present discontinuous occurrences by a former ‘‘ universal or 
sub-universal distribution” of their groups. This is indeed an easy method of cutting 
the knot, but in reality they shunt the question only a stage or two back, never troubling 
to explain how their groups managed to attain to that sub-universal range; or do they 
still suppose that the whole world was originally one paradise where everything lived side 
by side, until sin and strife and glacial epochs left nothing but scattered survivors? 
The permanence of the great ocean-basins had become a dogma since it was found 
that a universal elevation of the land to the extent of 100 fathoms would produce but 
little changes, and when it was shown that even the 1000 fathom-line followed the great 
masses of land rather closely, and still leaving the great basins (although transgression of 
the sea to the same extent would change the map of the world beyond recognition), by 
general consent one mile was allowed as the utmost speculative limit of subsidence. 
Naturally two or three miles, the average depth of the oceans, seems enormous, and yet 
such a difference in level is as nothing in comparison with the size of the Earth. On 
a clay model globe ten feet in diameter an ocean bed three miles deep would scarcely be 
detected, and the highest mountains would be smaller than the unavoidable grains in the 
glazed surface of our model. There are but few countries which have not been submerged 
at some time or other. 
