EAELY CONDITION OF AFRICA. 323 



We have, therefore, good evidence that the great 

 Euro-Asiatic continent of Miocene times exhibited in its 

 fauna a combination of all the main features which now 

 characterise the Palsearctic, Oriental, and Ethiopian 

 regions ; while tropical Africa, and such other tropical 

 lands as were then, like the peninsula of India, detached 

 and isolated from the continent, possessed a much more 

 limited fauna, consisting for the most part of animals of a 

 lower type, and which were more characteristic of Eocene 

 or Secondary times. Many of these have no doubt 

 become extinct, but they are probably represented by 

 the remarkable and isolated lemurs of West Africa and 

 Southern Asia, by the peculiar Insectivora of South 

 Africa and Malaya, and by the Edentata of Africa and 

 India. These are all low and ancient types, which were 

 represented in Europe in the Eocene and early Miocene 

 periods, at a time when the more highly specialised 

 horses, giraffes, antelopes, deer, buffaloes, hippopotami, 

 elephants, and anthropoid apes had not come into 

 existence. And if these large herbivorous animals were 

 all wanting in tropical Africa in Miocene times, we may 

 be quite sure that the large felines and other carnivora 

 which prey upon them were absent also. Lions, leopards, 

 and hysenas can only exist where antelopes, deer, or 

 some similar creatures abound ; while smaller forms 

 allied to the weasels and civets would be adapted to a 

 country where small rodents or defenceless Edentata 

 were the chief vegetable-feeding mammalia. 



If this view is correct (and it is supported by a con- 

 siderable amount of evidence which it is not possible 

 here to adduce), all the great mammalia which now 

 seem so specially characteristic of Africa — the lions, 



Y 2 



