218 PROF. J. LOGAN LOBLEY, F.G.S., F.R.G.S., ON 
Notwithstanding, however, the marked affinity between the 
present and past animals of South America and those of the 
Australian region, and between a portion of both the fauna 
and the flora of South America and the animals and plants of 
Africa and Madagascar, Dr. Eussell Wallace has opposed with 
his powerful pen the former direct connection between 
America and either Australia or Africa. In his view, all the 
animals of the southern part of America are derived from the 
north, and the animals of Australia and South Africa are 
derived from northern migrants likewise, and so the present 
faunas of the southern extremities of both hemispheres have 
been derived from more northern centres of dispersal ; that, 
in fact, earlier types migrated or were driven to the south of 
both the Old and New Worlds, and there continued while 
newer and higher types were developed in the older areas of 
origin. Thus he regards the marsupials, the edentates, and 
the struthious Ehea of South America as survivals equally 
with the marsupials of Australia, the few edentates of Africa 
and India, and the ostriches and emus of Africa and 
Australasia. 
Wallace therefore only admits land connections between 
America and the Old World in the northern hemisphere, and 
following Huxley maintains the permanence of the great 
oceanic depressions of the globe. Since these views were 
published, however, the additional evidence from the Pata- 
gonian Tertiaries seems to compel an admission of former land 
connection with the Old World in the southern hemisphere. 
The hypothesis of a mid-Atlantic continent uniting Europe 
and Africa with the West Indies and America lias a fascina- 
tion for many, and has been strongly advocated by authors 
who must command attention. The Atlantis of Plato’s Timecus 
was a large island beyond the Pillars of Hercules, but the 
Atlantis of modern authors is greater, since it is a continent 
extending quite across the Atlantic Ocean even where it is 
widest and deepest. This would, it is contended, afford a 
direct passage for the terrestrial and coastal fauna and flora 
of the tropical and sub-tropical parts of the Old World to the 
West Indies and the American continent, and so explain the 
relations existing between the faunas and floras of the 
Mediterranean and West African areas, the Atlantic islands, 
and the tropical and sub-tropical parts of the New World. 
This view has recently been advocated by such an eminent 
zoogeographer as Dr. Scharff, who cites in its support the 
distributional facts furnished by the Azores, the Canary 
