THE AMERICAN FAUNA AND ITS ORIGIN. 
217 
Zealand and eleven others are closely allied to New Zealand 
species, so that Dr. Ortman remarks that the only clearly 
marked relations of this fauna are with Chili, New Zealand 
and Australia, but speaking of the entire fossil fauna of the 
Patagonian Miocene he writes : “ Thus we see that, in the 
Miocene Patagonian beds, we must distinguish two chief 
faunal elements : a tropic-sub- tropical one, which shows 
relations to the tropical parts of the rest of the earth (and 
through these with the sub-tropical faunas of the northern 
hemisphere in Europe and North America), and an antarctic 
element which is peculiar to the southern hemisphere, and 
which shows relations only to the faunas belonging to or 
connected with ancient Antarctica.”* 
The “ tropic-sub-tropical ” element of which Ortman speaks 
and which is conspicuous, points undoubtedly to a former land 
connection with Africa to which Madagascar was united in 
Tertiary times. 
Such a land connection of the southern terminations of the 
continents was suggested to Hooker as long ago as 1847 by the 
affinities of the floras of these sub-antarctic lands. A 
relationship between the Mollusca of Brazil and Africa was 
shown to exist by Yon Ihering. The edentates, sloths and 
armadillos, now living, and the gigantic extinct forms, Mega- 
therium, Mylodon, Glyptodon, etc., of South America, are unlike 
anything in the Pakearctic region either living or fossil, and 
are allied only to two families in Africa and one in the Oriental 
region. Africa, too, is the habitat of the ostrich, and the only 
other struthious birds are in South America and Australasia. 
The extraordinary number of families of reptiles and 
amphibians, particularly of snakes, common to the southern 
lands of the two hemispheres, is very cogent evidence for a 
former connection with Africa. This reptilian and amphibian 
fauna is mainly a tropical one and cannot be looked upon, 
therefore, as having come by way of the northern parts of the 
continents. It is also plainly indicated by the fossil shells 
and corals of the West Indies of Miocene age that there was a 
sea barrier between the northern and the southern parts of 
America in Tertiary times. Thus it seems not unreasonable to 
conclude that while there was a separating sea between South 
and North America in the Tertiary period, a land connection 
existed in the south between Patagonia and the Australian and 
Ethiopian regions. 
p 2 
* Princeton University Report vol. iv, p. 324. 
