334 
Dr. G. Hartlaub on the Avifauna of 
XXVII.— General Remarks on the Avifauna of Madagascar 
and the Mascarene Islands. By Dr. G. Hartlaub*. 
Five-and-thirty years ago, Isidore Geoffroy St.-Hilaire 
remarked that, if one had to classify the Island of Madagas¬ 
car exclusively on zoological considerations, and without re¬ 
ference to its geographical situation, it could be shown to be 
neither Asiatic nor African, but quite different from either, 
and almost a fourth continent. And this fourth continent 
could be further proved to be, as regards its fauna, much 
more different from Africa, which lies so near to it, than from 
India, which is so far away. With these words, the correct¬ 
ness and pregnancy of which later investigations tend to bring 
into their full light, the French naturalist first stated the 
interesting problem for the solution of which an hypothesis 
based on scientific knowledge has recently been propounded; 
for this fourth continent of Isidore Geoffroy is SclateFs 
“ Lemuria ”—that sunken land which, containing parts of 
Africa, must have extended far eastwards over Southern 
India and Ceylon, and the highest points of which we recog¬ 
nize in the volcanic peaks of Bourbon and Mauritius, and in 
the central range of Madagascar itself—the last resorts of the 
mostly extinct Lemurine race which formerly peopled it. 
“ The Farquhar Islands and the Seychelles in the north and 
the Coral-reef of Rodriguez and Calvados seem,” says a re¬ 
cent writer, “ to unite the ranges of its granitic hills with the 
Laccadives and Maldives and so on, with those mighty mani¬ 
festations of Nature which the Neilgherries and adjoining 
ranges present to us in Southern India.” When Wallace, 
whose utterances on this subject every one must read with 
the greatest interest, puts forward a former junction of Mada- 
* Abstracted from the introduction to Dr. Hartlaub’s new work i Die 
Vogel Madagascar und der benachbarten Inselgruppen,’ announced in our 
last issue (anted, p. 258). These remarks give a summary of Dr. Hart¬ 
laub’s conclusions as to the general aspect of the u Lemurian ” Avifauna, 
which according to this excellent and most useful handbook, is now known 
to contain 284 species. Of the 220 species found in Madagascar itself, 
104 are peculiar, and of these 30 so abnormal that they require to be re¬ 
ferred to peculiar genera. 
