EARLY CONDITION OF ASIA. 



327 



munication between the Malay Islands, on the one hand, 

 and South India with Ceylon, on the other. We find, 

 for example, such typical Malay forms as the Tupaia, 

 some Malay genera of cuckoos and Timaliidae, some 

 Malayan snakes and amphibia. The remarkable genus 

 Hestia among butterflies, and no less than seven genera 

 of beetles of purely Malay type,^ all occurring either 

 in Ceylon only or in the adjacent parts of the Peninsula, 

 but in no other part of India. These cases are so 

 numerous and so important, that they compel us to 

 assume some special geographical change to account for 

 them. But directly between Ceylon and Malaya there in-> 

 tervenes an ocean-depth of more than 15,000 feet; and 

 besides the improbability of so great a subsidence, of 

 which we have no direct evidence, a land communication 

 of this kind would almost certainly have left more 

 general proofs of its existence in the faunas of the two 

 countries. But, when in Miocene times a sub-tropical 

 climate extended into Central Europe, it seems probable 

 that the equatorial belt of vegetation accompanied by 

 its peculiar fauna, would have been wider than at present 

 extending perhaps as far as Burma. If then the shallow 

 northern part of the Bay of Bengal had been tempo- 

 rarily elevated during the late Miocene or Pliocene 

 epochs, a few Malayan types may have migrated to the 

 Peninsula of India ; and have been preserved only in 

 Ceylon and the Nilgherries, where the climate still retains 

 somewhat of its equatorial character and the struggle 

 for existence is somewhat less severe than in the northern 

 part of the region, which is so much more productive 

 in varied forms of life. 



^ For details see Geograpliical Distribution of Animals^ vol. i. p. 327. 



