398 
ISLAND LIFE, 
[part II, 
views has been reproduced in a scientific periodical , 1 and the 
supposed Lemurian continent is constantly referred to by quasi- 
scientific writers, as well as by naturalists and geologists, as if its 
existence had been demonstrated by facts, or as if it were abso- 
lutely necessary to postulate such a land in order to account for 
the entire series of phenomena connected with the Madagascar 
fauna, and especially with the distribution of the Lemuridse . 2 
I think I have now shown, on the other hand, that it was 
essentially a provisional hypothesis, very useful in calling atten- 
tion to a remarkable series of problems in geographical distri- 
bution, but not affording the true solution of those problems, 
any more than the hypothesis of an Atlantis solved the problems 
presented by the Atlantic Islands and the relations of the 
European and North American flora and fauna. The Atlantis 
is now rarely introduced seriously except by the absolutely 
unscientific, having received its death-blow by the chapter on 
Oceanic Islands in the Origin of Species, and the researches of 
Professor Asa Gray on the affinities of the North American 
and Asiatic floras. But “ Lemuria ” still keeps its place — a good 
example of the survival of a provisional hypothesis which offers 
1 The Ibis, 1877, p. 334. 
2 In a paper read before the Geological Society in 1874, Mr. H. F. Blan- 
ford, from the similarity of the fossil plants and reptiles, supposed that 
India and South Africa had been connected by a continent, “and remained 
so connected with some short intervals from the Permian up to the end of 
the Miocene period,” and Mr. Woodward expressed his satisfaction with 
“ this further evidence derived from the fossil flora of the Mesozoic series of 
India in corroboration of the former existence of an old submerged conti- 
nent — Lemuria.” 
Those who have read the preceding chapters of the present work will 
not need to have pointed out to them how utterly inconclusive is the frag- 
mentary evidence derived from such remote periods (even if there were no 
evidence on the other side) as indicating geographical changes. The notion 
that a similarity in the productions of widely separated continents at any 
past epoch is only to be explained by the existence of a direct land-con- 
nection, is entirely opposed to all that we know of the wide and varying 
distribution of all types at different periods, as well as to the great powers 
of dispersal over moderate widths of ocean possessed by all animals except 
mammalia. It is no less opposed to what is now known of the general 
permanency of the great continental and oceanic areas ; while in this par- 
ticular case it is totally inconsistent (as has been shown above) with the 
actual facts of the distribution of animals. 
