CHAP. XIX.] 
THE MADAGASCAR GROUP. 
395 
But the absence of the numerous peculiar groups of African 
birds is so exactly parallel to the same phenomenon among 
mammals, that we are justified in imputing it to the same 
cause, the more especially as some of the very groups that 
are wanting — the plantain-eaters and the trogons, for example, 
— are actually known to have inhabited Europe along with the 
large mammalia which subsequently migrated to Africa. As to 
the peculiarly Eastern genera — such as Copsychus and Hyp- 
si petes, with a Dicrurus, Ploceus, a Cisticola, and a Scops, all 
closely allied to Indian or Malayan species — although very 
striking to the ornithologist, they certainly do not outweigh 
the fourteen African genera found in Madagascar. Their pre- 
sence may, moreover, be accounted for more satisfactorily than 
by means of an ancient Lemurian continent, which, even if 
granted, would not explain the very facts adduced in its support. 
Let us first prove this latter statement. 
The supposed “ Lemuria ” must have existed, if at all, at so 
remote a period that the higher animals did not then inhabit 
either Africa or Southern Asia, and it must have become par- 
tially or wholly submerged before they reached those countries ; 
otherwise we should find in Madagascar many other animals 
besides Lemurs, Insectivora, and Viverridse, especially such 
active arboreal creatures as monkeys and squirrels, such hardy 
grazers as deer or antelopes, or such wide-ranging carnivores as 
foxes or bears. This obliges us to date the disappearance of the 
hypothetical continent about the earlier part of the Miocene 
epoch at latest, for during the latter part of that period we 
know that such animals existed in abundance in every part of 
the great northern continents wherever we have found organic 
remains. But the Oriental birds in Madagascar, by whose pre- 
sence Dr. Hartlaub upholds the theory of a Lemuria, are slightly 
modified forms of existing Indian genera , or sometimes, as Dr. 
Hartlaub himself points out, species hardly distinguishable from 
those of India. Now all the evidence at our command leads 
us to conclude that, even if these genera and species were in 
existence in the early Miocene period, they must have had a 
widely different distribution from w 7 hat they have now. Along 
with so many African and Indian genera of mammals they then 
