394 
ISLAND LIFE. 
[part it. 
and pleasant is it to speculate on former changes of land and 
sea with which to cut the gordian knot offered by anomalies 
of distribution, that we still continually meet with suggestions 
of former continents stretching in every direction across the 
deepest oceans, in order to explain the presence in remote parts 
of the globe of the same genera even of plants or of insects — 
organisms which possess such exceptional facilities both for ter- 
restrial, aerial, and oceanic transport, and of whose distribution 
in past ages we generally know absolutely nothing. 
The Birds of Madagascar, as indicating a supposed Lcmurian 
continent . — Having thus shown how the distribution of the land 
mammalia and reptiles of Madagascar may be well explained by 
the supposition of a union with Africa before the greater part of its 
existing fauna had reached it, we have now to consider whether, 
as some ornithologists think, the distribution and affinities of 
the birds present an insuperable objection to this view, and 
require the adoption of a hypothetical continent — Lemuria — 
extending from Madagascar to Cejlon and the Malay Islands. 
There are about one hundred land birds known from the island 
of Madagascar, all but four or five being peculiar ; and about 
half of these peculiar species belong to peculiar genera, many 
of which are extremely isolated, so that it is often difficult to 
class them in any of the recognised families, or to determine 
their affinities to any living birds. Among the other moiety, 
belonging to known genera, we find fifteen which have un- 
doubted African affinities, while five or six are as decidedly 
Oriental, the genera or nearest allied species being found in 
India or the Malay Islands. It is on the presence of these 
peculiar Indian types that Dr. Hartlaub, in his recent work on 
the Birds of Madagascar and the Adjacent Islands, lays great 
stress, as proving the former existence of “ Lemuria ; ” while he 
considers the absence of such peculiar African families as the 
plantain-eaters, glossy-starlings, ox-peckers, barbets, honey- 
guides, hornbills, and bustards — besides a host of peculiar 
African genera — as sufficiently disproving the statement in my 
Geographical Distribution of Animals that Madagascar is “ more 
nearly related to the Ethiopian than to any other region,” and 
that its fauna was evidently “ mainly derived from Africa.” 
