s of Madagascar and East Africa are said to have their
nearest allies in Australia. (See Dobson in _Nature_, Vol. XXX. p. 575.)

[151] This view was, I believe, first advanced by Professor Huxley in his
"Anniversary Address to the Geological Society," in 1870. He says:--"In
fact the Miocene mammalian fauna of Europe and the Himalayan regions
contain, associated together, the types which are at present separately
located in the South African and Indian provinces of Arctogaea. Now there
is every reason to believe, on other grounds, that both Hindostan south of
the Ganges, and Africa south of the Sahara, were separated by a wide sea
from Europe and North Asia during the Middle and Upper Eocene epochs. Hence
it becomes highly probable that the well-known similarities, and no less
remarkable differences, between the present faunae of India and South
Africa have arisen in some such fashion as the following: Some time during
the Miocene epoch, the bottom of the nummulitic sea was upheaved and
converted into dry land in the direction of a line extending from Abyssinia
to the mouth of the Ganges. By this means the Dekkan on the one hand and
South Africa on the other, became connected with the Miocene dry land and
with one another. The Miocene mammals spread gradually over this
intermediate dry land; and if the condition of its eastern and western ends
offered as wide contrasts as the valleys of the Ganges and Arabia do now,
many forms which made their way into Africa must have been different from
those which reached the Dekkan, while others might pass into both these
sub-provinces."

This question is fully discussed in my _Geographical Distribution of
Animals_ (Vol. I., p. 285), where I expressed views somewhat different from
those of Professor Huxley, and made some slight errors which are corrected
in the present work. As I did not then refer to Professor Huxley's prior
statement of the theory of Miocene immigration into Africa (which I had
read but the reference to which I could not recall) I am happy to give his
views here.

[152] The total number of Madagascar birds is 238, of which 129 are
absolutely peculiar to the island, as are thirty-five of the genera. All
the peculiar birds but two are land birds. These are the numbers given in
M. Grandidier's great work on Madagascar.

[153] _The Ibis_, 1877, p. 334.

[154] In a paper read before the Geological Society in 1874, Mr. H. F.
Blanford, from the similarity of the fossi