CHAP. XIX.] 



TPIE MADAGASCAR GROUP. 



301 



It is clear, therefore, that if Madagascar had once formed 

 part of Africa, but had been separated from it before Africa 

 was united to Europe and Asia, it would not contain any of 

 those kinds of animals which then first entered the country. 

 But, besides the African mammals, we know that some birds 

 now confined to Africa then inhabited Europe, and we may there- 

 fore fairly assume that all the more important groups of birds, 

 reptiles, and insects, now abundant in Africa but absent from 

 Madagascar, formed no part of the original African fauna, but 

 entered the country only after it was joined to Europe and Asia. 



Early History of A frica and Madagascar, — We have seen that 

 Madagascar contains an abundance of mammals, and that most 

 of them are of types either peculiar to, or existing also in, Africa ; 

 it follows that that continent must have had an earlier union 

 with Europe, Asia, or America, or it could never have obtained 

 any mammals at all. Now these ancient African mammals are 

 Lemurs, Insectivora, and small Carnivora, chiefly Viverridse ; 

 and all these groups are known to have inhabited Europe in 

 Eocene and Miocene times; and that the union was with 

 Europe rather than with America is clearly proved by the fact 

 that even the Insectivorous Centetidse, now confined to Mada- 

 gascar and the West Indies, inhabited France in the Lower 

 Miocene period, while the Yiverridse, or civets, which form so 



Some time during the Miocene epoch, the bottom of the nummulitic sea 

 was upheaved and converted into dry kind in the direction of a line ex- 

 tending from Abyssinia to the mouth of the Ganges. By this means the 

 Dekkan on the one hand and South Africa on the other, became connected 

 with the Miocene dry land and with one another. The Miocene mammals 

 spread gradually over this intermediate dry land ; and if the condition of 

 its eastern and western ends offered as wide contrasts as the vallej's of the 

 Ganges and Arabia do now, many forms which made their way into Africa 

 must have been different from those which reached the Dekkan, while 

 others might pass into both these sub-provinces," 



This question is fully discussed in my GeograpMcal Distribution of 

 Animals (Vol. I., p. 285), where I expressed views somewhat different from 

 those of Professor Huxley and made some slight errors which are corrected 

 in the present work. As I did not then refer to Professor Huxley's prior 

 statement of the theory of Miocene immigration into Africa (which I had 

 read but the reference to which I could not recall) I am happy to give 

 his views here. 



