CHAP. XIX.] 



THE MADAGASCAR GROUP. 



395 



But the absence of the numerous peculiar groups of African 

 birds is so exactly parallel to the same phenomenon among 

 mammals, that we are justified in imputing it to the same 

 cause, the more especially as some of the very groups that 

 are wanting — the plantain-eaters and the trogons, for example, 

 ■ — ^are actually known to have inhabited Europe along with the 

 large mammalia which subsequently migrated to Africa. As to 

 the peculiarly Eastern genera — such as Copsychus and Hyp- 

 si petes, with a Dicrurus, Ploceus, a Cisticola, and a Scops, all 

 closely allied to Indian or Malayan species — although very 

 striking to the ornithologist, they certainly do not outweigh 

 the fourteen African genera found in Madagascar. Their pre- 

 sence may, moreover, be accounted for more satisfactorily than 

 by means of an ancient Lemurian continent, which, even if 

 granted, would not explain the very facts adduced in its support. 



Let us first prove this latter statement. 



The supposed " Lemuria " must have existed, if at all, at so 

 remote a period that the higher animals did not then inhabit 

 either Africa or Southern Asia, and it must have become par- 

 tially or wholly submerged before they reached those countries ; 

 otherwise we should find in Madagascar many other animals 

 besides Lemurs, Insectivora, and Viverridse, especially such 

 active arboreal creatures as monkeys and squirrels, such hardy 

 grazers as deer or antelopes, or such wide-ranging carnivores as 

 foxes or bears. This obliges us to date the disappearance of the 

 hypothetical continent about the earlier part of the Miocene 

 epoch at latest, for during the latter part of that period we 

 know that such animals existed in abundance in every part of 

 the great northern continents wherever we have found organic 

 remains. But the Oriental birds in Madagascar, by whose pre- 

 sence Dr. Hartlaub upholds the theory of a Lemuria, are slightly 

 modified forms of existing Indian genera, or sometimes, as Dr. 

 Hartlaub himself points out, species hardly distinguishahle from 

 those of India. Now all the evidence at our command leads 

 us to conclude that, even if these genera and species were in 

 existence in the early Miocene period, they must have had a 

 widely different distribution from what they have now. Along 

 with so many African and Indian genera of mammals they then 



