326 TROPICAL NATURE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. 



the other hand, we must look upon the monkeys, the 

 large carnivora, the deer, the antelopes, the wild pigs, 

 and the elephants, as having overrun the country from 

 the north; and their entrance must, no doubt, have 

 led to the extermination of many of the lower types. 



But there is another remarkable series of changes 

 which have undoubtedly taken place in Eastern Asia in 

 Tertiary times. There is such a close affinity between 

 the animals of the Sunda Islands and those of the 

 Malay Peninsula and Siam ; and between those of Japan 

 and of Northern Asia, that there can be little doubt that 

 these islands once formed a southern and eastern exten- 

 sion of the Asiatic continent. The Philippines and 

 Celebes perhaps also formed a part of this continent ; 

 but if so, the peculiarity and poverty of their mammalian 

 fauna shows that they must have been separated at a 

 much earlier period.^ The other islands probably 

 remained united to the continent till the Pliocene 

 period. The result is seen in the similarity of the 

 flora of Japan to that which prevailed in Europe in Mio- 

 cene times ; while in the larger Malay Islands we find, 

 along with a rich flora developed under long-continued 

 equatorial conditions of uniform heat and moisture, a 

 remnant of the fauna which accompanied it, of which 

 the Malay tapir, the anthropoid apes, the tupaias, the 

 galeopitheci or flying lemurs, and the sun-bears, may be 

 representatives. 



There is another very curious set of relations worthy 

 of our notice, because they imply some former com- 



^ For a full account of the evidence and conclusions as to these islands see 

 the author's Geographical Distribution of Animals, vol. i. pp. 345, 359, 

 426, 436. 



