CHAPTER XIX. 
ANCIENT CONTINENTAL ISLANDS : THE MADAGASCAR GROUP. 
Remarks on Ancient Continental Islands — Physical features of Madagascar 
— Biological features of Madagascar — Mammalia — Reptiles — Relation 
of Madagascar to Africa — Early history of Africa and Madagascar 
Anomalies of distribution and how to explain them— The birds of 
Madagascar as indicating a supposed Lemurian Continent — Submerged 
Islands between Madagascar and India — Concluding remarks on “ Lemu- 
r ia ” — The Mascarene Islands — The Comoro Islands — The Seychelles 
Archipelago — Birds of the Seychelles — Reptiles and Amphibia — Fresh- 
water Fishes — Land Shells — Mauritius, Bourbon, and Rodriguez Birds 
— Extinct Birds and their probable origin — Reptiles — Flora of Mada- 
gascar and the Mascarene Islands — Curious relations of Mascarene 
plants — Endemic genera of Mauritius and Seychelles — Fragmentary 
character of the Mascarene Flora — Flora of Madagascar allied to that 
of South Africa — Preponderance of Ferns in the Mascarene Flora- 
Concluding remarks on the Madagascar Group. 
We have now to consider the phenomena presented by a very 
distinct class of islands — those which, although once forming 
part of a continent, have been separated from it at a remote 
epoch when its animal forms were very unlike what they are 
now. Such islands preserve to us the record of a by-gone 
world, — of a period when many of the higher types had not 
yet come into existence and when the distribution of others 
was very different from what prevails at the present day. The 
problem presented by these ancient islands is often complicated 
by the changes they themselves have undergone since the period 
of their separation. A partial subsidence will have led to the 
extinction of some of the types that were originally preserved, 
