ikingly confirms a conjecture which I ventured to
make elsewhere[1], relative to the isolation of Ceylon and its
distinctness, in many remarkable particulars, from the great continent
of India. Every writer who previously treated of the island, including
the accomplished Dr. Davy and the erudite Lassen, was contented, by a
glance at its outline and a reference to its position on the map, to
assume that Ceylon was a fragment, which in a very remote age had been
torn from the adjacent mainland, by some convulsion of nature. Hence it
was taken for granted that the vegetation which covers and the races of
animals which inhabit it, must be identical with those of Hindustan; to
which Ceylon was alleged to bear the same relation as Sicily presents to
the peninsula of Italy. MALTE BRUN[2] and the geographers generally,
declared the larger animals of either to be common to both. I was led to
question the soundness of this dictum;--and from a closer examination of
its geological conformation and of its botanical and zoological
characteristics I came to the conclusion that not only is there an
absence of sameness between the formations of the two localities; but
that plants and animals, mammals, birds, reptiles, and insects exist in
Ceylon, which are not to be found in the flora and fauna of the Dekkan;
but which present a striking affinity, and occasionally an actual
identity, with those of the Malayan countries and some of the islands of
the Eastern Archipelago. Startling as this conclusion appeared to be, it
was strangely in unison with the legends of the Singhalese themselves,
that at an infinitely remote period Ceylon formed an integral portion of
a vast continent, known in the mythical epics of the Brahmans by the
designation of "_Lanka_;" so immense that its southern extremity fell
below the equator, whilst in breadth it was prolonged till its western
and eastern boundaries touch at once upon the shores of Africa and
China.

[Footnote 1: _Ceylon, &c._, by Sir J. EMERSON TENNENT, vol. i. pp. 7,
13, 85, 160, 183, n., 205, 270, &c.]

[Footnote 2: MALTE BRUN, _Geogr. Univ._, l. xlix.]

Dim as is this ancient tradition, it is in consistency with the
conclusions of modern geology, that at the commencement of the tertiary
period northern Asia and a considerable part of India were in all
probability covered by the sea but that south of India land extended
eastward and westward connecting Malacca with Arabia. PROFESSOR ANSTED
has