_The Birds of Madagascar, as Indicating a Supposed Lemurian Continent._--Having thus shown how the distribution of the land mammalia and reptiles of Madagascar may be well explained by the supposition of a union with Africa before the greater part of its existing fauna had reached it, we have now to consider whether, as some ornithologists think, the distribution and affinities of the birds present an insuperable objection to this view, and require the adoption of a hypothetical continent--Lemuria--extending from Madagascar to Ceylon and the Malay Islands. There are about one hundred and fifty land birds known from the island of Madagascar, of which a hundred and twenty-seven are peculiar; and about half of these peculiar species belong to peculiar genera, many of which are extremely isolated, so that it is often difficult to class them in any of the recognised families, or to determine their affinities to any living birds.[100] Among the other moiety, {423} belonging to known genera, we find fifteen which have undoubted African affinities, while five or six are as decidedly Oriental, the genera or nearest allied species being found in India or the Malay Islands. It is on the presence of these peculiar Indian types that Dr. Hartlaub, in his recent work on the _Birds of Madagascar and the Adjacent Islands_, lays great stress, as proving the former existence of "Lemuria"; while he considers the absence of such peculiar African families as the plantain-eaters, glossy-starlings, ox-peckers, barbets, honey-guides, hornbills, and bustards--besides a host of peculiar African genera--as sufficiently disproving the statement in my _Geographical Distribution of Animals_ that Madagascar is "more nearly related to the Ethiopian than to any other region," and that its fauna was evidently "mainly derived from Africa." But the absence of the numerous peculiar groups of African birds is so exactly parallel to the same phenomenon among mammals, that we are justified in imputing it to the same cause, the more especially as some of the very groups that are wanting--the plantain-eaters and the trogons, for example,--are actually known to have inhabited Europe along with the large mammalia which subsequently migrated to Africa. As to the peculiarly Eastern genera--such as Copsychus and Hypsipetes, with a Dicrurus, a Ploceus, a Cisticola, and a Scops, all closely allied to Indian or Malayan species--although very striking to the ornithologist, they certainly do not outweigh the fourteen African genera found in Madagascar. Their presence may, moreover, be accounted for more satisfactorily than by means of an ancient Lemurian continent, which, even if granted, would not explain the very facts adduced in its support. Let us first prove this latter statement.