CHAPTER XIX 



ANCIENT CONTINENTAL ISLANDS : THE MADAGASCAR GROUP 



Remarks on Ancient Continental Islands — Physical Features of Madagascar 

 — Biological Features of Madagascar — Mammalia — Reptiles — Relation 

 of Madagascar to Africa — Early History of Africa and Madagascar — 

 Anomalies of Distribution and How to Explain Them — The Birds of 

 Madagascar as Indicating a Supposed Lemurian Continent — Submerged 

 Islands between Madagascar and India — Concluding Remarks on 

 * ' Lemuria " — The Mascarene Islands — The Comoro Islands — The Sey- 

 chelles Archipelago — Birds of the Seychelles — Reptiles and Amphibia — ■ 

 Freshwater Fishes — Land Shells — Mauritius, Bourbon, and Rodriguez — 

 Birds — Extinct Birds and their Probable Origin — Reptiles — Flora of 

 Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands — Curious Relations of Mascarene 

 Plants — Endemic Genera of Mauritius and Seychelles — Fragmentary 

 Character of the Mascarene Flora — Flora of Madagascar Allied to that 

 of South Africa — Preponderance of Ferns in the Mascarene Flora — Con- 

 cluding Remarks on the Madagascar Group. 



We have now to consider the phenomena presented by a 

 very distinct class of islands — those which, although once 

 forming part of a continent, have been separated from it at 

 a remote epoch when its animal forms were very unlike 

 what they are now. Such islands preserve to us the 

 record of a by-gone world, — of a period when many of the 

 higher types had not yet come into existence and when 

 the distribution of others was very different from what 

 prevails at the present day. The problem presented by 

 these ancient islands is often complicated by the changes 

 they themselves have undergone since the period of their 

 separation. A partial subsidence will have led to the 



