l 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 continent--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
fragmentary 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-connection, 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 particular case it is totally inconsistent (as has been shown above)
with the actual facts of the distribution of animals.

[155] _Geographical Distribution of Animals_, Vol. I., pp. 272-292.

[156] The term "Mascarene" is used here in an extended sense, to include
all the islands near Madagascar which resemble it in their animal and
vegetable productions.

[157] For the birds of the Comoro Islands see _Proc. Zool. Soc._, 1877, p.
295, and 1879, p. 673.

[158] The following is a list of these peculiar birds. (See the _Ibis_, for
1867, p. 359; and 1879, p. 97.)

PASSERES.

_Ellisia seychelensis._
_Copsychus seychellarum._
_Hypsipetes crassirostris._
_Tchitrea corvina._
_Nectarinia dussumieri._
_Zosterops modesta._
" _semiflava._
_Foudia seychellarum._

PSITTACI.

_Coracopsis barklyi._
_Palaeornis wardi._

COLUMBAE.

_Alectoraenas pulcherrimus._
_Turtur rostratus._

ACCIPITRES.

_Tinnunculus gracilis._

[159] Specimens are recorded from West Africa in the _Proceedings of the
Academy of Natural Science_, Philadelphia, 1857, p. 72, while specimens in
the Paris Museum were brought by D'Orbigny from S. America. Dr. Wright's
specimens from the Seychelles have,