No. 462] NOTES AND LITERATURE. 415 
fauna of South America find allied forms in many parts of the world, 
but where the most closely allied forms are found in Australia ; in 
other cases, the nearest relations are found in West Africa. For 
such cases the theory of former subuniversal distribution is entirely 
insufficient, and only leads to the further question, why it is, that 
from a former universal distribution, the most closely allied remnants 
are found in the most remote parts? For we must always bear in 
mind, that, if we do not admit direct connections between South 
America and Africa, and South America and Australia, the connec- 
tion of these parts always goes by way of Bering Sea or Greenland. 
- Pfeffer himself mentions’a number of instances, where the present 
distribution appears to favor a direct connection of the three southern 
continents, but he never studies them closely, and is satisfied with the 
conclusion that they very likely are also remnants of a former sub- 
universal ‘distribution. The following are the most striking examples: 
Chelonia, family Miolaniide ; Lacertilia, genus Mabuia, family 
Amphisbenide; Ophidia, families Typhlopide and Glauconiidz, 
genus Leptodira; Batrachia Anura, families Pipidze, Cystignathidze, 
Hylidz, and Engystomide; Batrachia Apoda, family Coeciliidz ; 
Teleostei, families Characinid&, Symbranchidze, Serranid&, Cichlidz. 
I do not say that these groups actually furnish evidence for the 
supposed former connections of the ‘southern continents; I only 
want to call attention to them, with a view to having them made the 
object of careful, detailed, and unprejudiced examination, paying 
principal attention to the mutual affinities of their representative 
members in the different parts of the world. Pfeffer has not done 
this, and thus his treatment of these groups is superficial and unsat- 
isfactory ; in some of the above instances, objections to the assump- 
tion of former subuniversality of distribution are evident at the first 
gu —9 
Thus Pfeffer's final conclusion, that there is no necessity for the 
assumption of direct land connections between South America and 
Africa, and South America and Australia, upon zoögeographical 
grounds, is not properly supported even with reference to those 
groups which he made his special object of study in the present 
paper. In the face of the fact that there are other groups not men- 
tioned and studied by Pfeffer, that have furnished positive evidence 
for these connections, and in which the assumption of former subuni- 
versal distribution is entirely unsatisfactory, rendering the present 
conditions only more unintelligible, we get the impression that 
Pfeffer did not take up these studies with an unbiased mind. 
