398 



ISLAND LIFE. 



[part it. 



views has been reproduced in a scientific periodical/ and the 

 supposed Lemurian continent is constantly referred to by quasi- 

 scientific writers, as well as by naturalists and geologists, as if its 

 existence had been demonstrated by facts, or as if it were abso- 

 lutely necessary to postulate such a land in order to account for 

 the entire series of phenomena connected with the Madagascar 

 fauna, and especially with the distribution of the Lemuridse.^ 

 I think I have now shown, on the other hand, that it was 

 essentially a provisional hypothesis, very useful in calling atten- 

 tion to a remarkable series of problems in geographical distri- 

 bution, but not affording the true solution of those problems, 

 any more than the hypothesis of an Atlantis solved the problems 

 presented by the Atlantic Islands and the relations of the 

 European and North American flora and fauna. The Atlantis 

 is now rarely introduced seriously except by the absolutely 

 unscientific, having received its death-blow by the . chapter on 

 Oceanic Islands in the Origin of Species, and the researches of 

 Professor Asa Gray on the affinities of the North American 

 and Asiatic floras. But " Lemuria " still keeps its place — a good 

 example of the survival of a provisional hypothesis which offers 



1 The Ibis, 1877, p. 334. 



2 In a paper read before the Geological Society in 1874, Mr. H. F. Blan- 

 ford, from the similarity of the fossil plants and reptiles, supposed that 

 India and South Africa had been connected by a continent, "and remained 

 so connected with some short intervals from the Permian up to the end of 

 the Miocene period," and Mr. Woodward expressed his satisfaction with 

 " this further evidence derived from the fossil flora of the Mesozoic series of 

 India in corroboration of the former existence of an old submerged conti- 

 nent^ — Lemuria." 



Those who have read the preceding chapters of the present work wiU 

 not need to have pointed out to them how utterly inconclusive is the frag- 

 mentary evidence derived from such remote periods (even if there were no 

 evidence on the other side) as indicating geographical changes. The notion 

 that a similarity in the productions of Mndely separated continents at any 

 past epoch is only to be explained by the existence of a direct land-con- 

 nection, is entirely opposed to all that we know of the wide and varying 

 distribution of all types at different periods, as well as to the great powers 

 of dispersal over moderate widths of ocean possessed by all animals except 

 mammalia. It is no less opposed to what is now known of the general 

 permanency of the great continental and oceanic areas ; while in this par- 

 ticular case it is totally inconsistent (as has been shown above) with the 

 actual facts of the distribution of animals. 



