Atlantis Once More . 
323 
1883.] 
Canaries, can scarcely serve to explain the presence of the 
reindeer, the musk-ox, the glutton, the lemming, &c., on both 
sides of the ocean. If, again, we compare the Fauna and 
the Flora of Africa with those of the Neotropical region, we 
find the most total contrast. This is not what we should 
expeft if, as Mr. Donnelly holds, there was a land-commu- 
nication between West Africa and South America or the 
West Indies. Whereas if, as is commonly done, we suppose 
animal life to have taken its origin in the Ardtic region, as 
the part of the earth which first became sufficiently cool to 
be habitable and to have gradually extended southwards, 
becoming modified on its way, we should have, as may be 
seen, great similarity in the boreal regions, gradually passing 
southwards into extreme diversity. That a land-connedtion 
between Europe and America may have existed down to a 
comparatively recent period is regarded by geologists as not 
improbable. But the evidence at command places it much 
farther north than the supposed site of Atlantis. 
An unfavourable piece of evidence may be drawn from the 
Fauna of the Azores. These islands, if Mr. Donnelly is in 
the right, must be remnants of Atlantis. Yet their animal 
population has nothing of a continental character, but seems 
formed of such waifs and strays as have been driven there 
by stress of weather. 
Mr. Donnelly refers, in more than one part of his book, to 
cultivated plants as being either of unknown source or as 
being common to both hemispheres, and draws hence the 
scarcely legitimate conclusion that they must have originated 
in Atlantis, and have been introduced into other regions by 
the people of that empire in their commercial or military 
expeditions. As their empire, according to a map here given, 
included the coasts of India as far as the Ganges, Persia, 
Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia, on the one hand, and Mexico, the 
Valley of the Amazon, and Peru on the other, we may ask, 
How is it that they did not introduce the cultivation of sugar, 
tea, coffee, silk, and jute into their western possessions, and 
that of cocoa and cochineal into Africa and India ? Yet 
these tasks were left for a much later age. The author 
asks, “ Does Plato, speaking of fruits having a hard rind 
affording drinks and meat and ointments, refer to the cocoa- 
nut ? ” It is not impossible that he may have met with the 
cocoa-nut imported from India or the Eastern islands. We 
should think that its origin must be sought in the latter 
rather than in America. Be this as it may, there is no fruit 
so likely to spread without human agency as the cocoa-nut. 
It grows by preference on the sea-coasts ; it survives long 
