OF THE SPREAD OP THE EUROPEAN FAUNA. IIT 



which owing to the rise of the land had become shallow, or perhaps^ 

 obliterated."*^ 



Such is, I believe, in brief the account of that great migration of 

 Europasian animals into Africa, the progenitors of those now 

 inhabiting that great continent ; a migration of vast importance in 

 the history of races, and recalling to our minds the successive^- 

 migrations of the Asiatic tribes of men into Southern and Western 

 Europe which are recorded in history, and of which we have heard 

 so much from Mr. Kouse. It may not be considered inappropriate 

 as an appendix to the able paper for which we have to thank 

 Professor Lobley this evening. 



Mr. Rouse. — Upon this instructive and fascinating paper allow 

 me to make two criticisms. 



Firstl}^, the rabbit is not now in Great Britain through having- 

 crossed from Portugal or Spain in prehistoric times. A\'e read ir> 

 Murray's Historical English Dictionary, " The rabbit is evidently of 

 late introduction into Britain and Northern Europe ; it has no- 

 native name in Celtic or Teutonic, and there is no mention of it in 

 England before the Norman period." Its original name in English 

 and its present day name in German, conij and hinincJien, are both 

 derived, as that work tells us, from the Latin cuniculiis, which in 

 turn is, "according to ancient authors, of Spanish origin." The 

 earliest quotation that Murray can find for the creature of this name 

 is in 1200, the earliest for rabbit in 1440, where in an English-Latiii 

 word-list it is interpreted, "j^onge conye, cunicellus" ; while Turber- 

 ville in his Venerie (Ixiii, 178) writes, "The Conie beareth her 

 Rabettes xxx dayes." Moreover there was no direct land connection 

 in the Tertiary ^on between Great Britain and Lusitania, but onl}^ 

 between our island and North- Western France ; beyond that, around! 

 the Bay of Biscay, and down the coast of Gallicia and Portugal,, 

 there was an extension of the land area about fifty miles out to sea,, 

 represented by the present sub-marine plateau; therefore any 

 existing land animals that reached England from Lusitania overland 



Mr. Newton gives the fauna of Madagascar as consisting of 39 species, 

 of Lemuridce, 25 of Chamelionida?, 260 of birds, the Striithidae (or great 

 wingless birds) now in a fossil state, also three species of Hippopotamus, 

 swine, and a slender-legged form of Zebu-ox {Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc ^ 

 Feb., 1895). 



