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 indicafing a supposed Lemurian Continent — Submerged 

 Islands between Madagascar and India — Concluding remarks on " Lemu- 

 ria" — The Mascarene Islands — The Comoro Islands — The Seychelles 

 Archipelago — Birds of the Seychelles — Reptiles and Amphibia — Fresh- 

 water Fishes — Land Shells — Mauritius, Bourbon, and Rodriguez — Birds 

 • — Extinct Birds and their probable origin — Reptiles — Flora of Mada- 

 gascar 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 — • 

 Concluding 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 other3 

 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 

 extinction of some of the types that were originally preserved, 



