154 



JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). 



[Vol. IX. 



zoologist quoted.* The principal Malayan affinities among 

 animals are, I believe, found in two genera of Birds, 

 Phoenicophces and Myrophoneum, several genera of Longi- 

 corn Beetles, and the beautiful genus of Butterflies, Hestia ; 

 but I believe there is no large accumulation of such types 

 in the south-west among the animals as among the plants 

 of Ceylon. 



Wallace's theory is to the effect that the shallow northern 

 part of the Bay of Bengal has been elevated during the late 

 Miocene and Pliocene periods,! and thus a few Malayan 

 types were able to migrate to the Indian Peninsula, where 

 they have been preserved only in the Nilgiris and Ceylon, 

 where alone a suitable climate now prevails. 



This would derive our Malayan plants, like the great bulk 

 of our flora, from India. No doubt can be entertained of 

 an ancient continuity of the south-west coasts of India and 

 Ceylon, either directly or by their union with some interme- 

 diate or neighbouring laud,| but the numerous cases among 

 the plants of Ceylon where the closest affinities are seen to 

 be with the flora of the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago, 

 rather than with its extension into East Bengal,§ would 

 rather lead one to endeavour to trace a former means of 

 communication and transfer in a lower latitude, e.g., by the 

 Andamans or Sumatra. Both districts were of course 

 supplied from one and the same source, but it would seem 

 more in accordance with present facts to derive the feebly 



* It is singular that in Mr. Wallace's latest and very valuable book 

 " Island Life" (1 880), he does not once allude to Ceylon or the problems 

 it presents for solution. 



At this time geologists believe Peninsular India to have been cut 

 off as an island from the countries to the north, the Gangetic plain begin 

 occupied by the sea. 



\ I am indebted to Captain Donnan for the information, which is 

 important and somewhat unexpected, that the sea in the Gulf of Mannar 

 is over 1,000 fathoms deep, and perhaps as much as 1,450 fathoms, half 

 way between Kalpitiya and Cape Comorin. 



§ For instance, Dichilanthe, a very isolated genus in structure, with 

 one species in Ceylon and one in Borneo ; Axinandra, Prismatomeris, and 

 Allceophania, all in the same case ; Ptyssigloltis with a second species 

 in Java ; Gyrinops with a second species in the Moluccas, and many 

 similar cases ; besides the identical species to which attention has 

 already been called. 



