EARLY CONDITION OF ASIA. 



325 



history with any approach to accuracy. It is clear, 

 however, that Madagascar was once united with the 

 southern portion of the Continent, but it is no less clear 

 that its separation took place before the great irruption 

 of large animals just described ; for all these are 

 wanting, while lemurs, insectivora, and civets abound,^ — 

 the same low types which were once the only inhabitants 

 of the mainland. It is worthy of note, that south 

 temperate Africa still exhibits a remarkable assemblage 

 of peculiar forms of mammalia, birds, and insects, — the 

 two former groups mostly of a low grade of organisa- 

 tion ; and these, taken in connection with the wonder- 

 fully rich and highly specialised flora of the Cape of Good 

 Hope, point to the former existence of an extensive 

 south-temperate land in which so many peculiar types 

 could have been developed. Whether this land was 

 separated or not from Equatorial Africa, or formed with 

 it one great southern continent, there is no sufficient 

 evidence to determine. 



Turning now to tropical Asia, we find a somewhat 

 analogous series of events, but on a smaller scale and with 

 less strongly-marked results. At the time when tropical 

 and South Africa were so completely cut off from the 

 great northern continent, the peninsula of India with 

 Ceylon was also isolated ; and it seems probable that 

 their union with the continent took place at a somewhat 

 later period. The ancient fauna of this south- Asiatic island 

 may be represented by the slow Loris a peculiar type 

 of lemurs, some peculiar rats (Muridse), and perhaps by 

 the Edentate scaly ant-eater ; by its Uropeltidse a 

 peculiar family of snakes, and by many peculiar genera 

 of snakes and lizards, and a few peculiar amphibia. On 



