CHAP. XIX.] 
THE MADAGASCAR GROUP. 
391 
It is clear, therefore, that if Madagascar had once formed 
part of Africa, hut had been separated from it before Africa 
was united to Europe and Asia, it would not contain any of 
those kinds of animals which then first entered the country. 
But, besides the African mammals, we know that some birds 
now confined to Africa then inhabited Europe, and we may there- 
fore fairly assume that all the more important groups of birds, 
reptiles, and insects, now abundant in Africa but absent from 
Madagascar, formed no part of the original African fauna, but 
entered the country only after it was joined to Europe and Asia. 
Early History of Africa and Madagascar . — We have seen that 
Madagascar contains an abundance of mammals, and that most 
of them are of types either peculiar to, or existing also in, Africa ; 
it follows that that continent must have had an earlier union 
with Europe, Asia, or America, or it could never have obtained 
any mammals at all. Now these ancient African mammals are 
Lemurs, Insectivora, and small Carnivora, chiefly Yiverridae ; 
and all these groups are known to have inhabited Europe in 
Eocene and Miocene times; and that the union was with 
Europe rather than with America is clearly proved by the fact 
that even the Insectivorous Centetidae, now confined to Mada- 
gascar and the West Indies, inhabited France in the Lower 
Miocene period, while the Yiverridae, or civets, which form so 
Some time during the Miocene epoch, the bottom of the nummulitic sea 
was upheaved and converted into dry land in the direction of a line ex- 
tending from Abyssinia to the mouth of the Ganges. By this means the 
Dekkan on the one hand and South Africa on the other, became connected 
with the Miocene dry land and with one another. The Miocene mammals 
spread gradually over this intermediate dry land ; and if the condition of 
its eastern and western ends offered as wide contrasts as the valleys of the 
Ganges and Arabia do now, many forms which made their way into Africa 
must have been different from those which reached the Dekkan, while 
others might pass into both these sub-provinces.” 
This question is fully discussed in my Geographical Distribution of 
Animals (Vol. I., p. 285), where I expressed views somewhat different from 
those of Professor Huxley and made some slight errors which are corrected 
in the present work. As I did not then refer to Professor Huxley’s prior 
statement of the theory of Miocene immigration into Africa (which I had 
read but the reference to which I could not recall) I am happy to give 
his view's here. 
