The supposed "Lemuria" must have existed, if at all, at so remote a period that the higher animals did not then inhabit either Africa or Southern Asia, and it must have {424} become partially or wholly submerged before they reached those countries; otherwise we should find in Madagascar many other animals besides Lemurs, Insectivora, and Viverridae, especially such active arboreal creatures as monkeys and squirrels, such hardy grazers as deer or antelopes, or such wide-ranging carnivores as foxes or bears. This obliges us to date the disappearance of the hypothetical continent about the earlier part of the Miocene epoch at latest, for during the latter part of that period we know that such animals existed in abundance in every part of the great northern continents wherever we have found organic remains. But the Oriental birds in Madagascar, by whose presence Dr. Hartlaub upholds the theory of a Lemuria, are slightly modified forms of _existing Indian genera_, or sometimes, as Dr. Hartlaub himself points out, _species hardly distinguishable from those of India_. Now all the evidence at our command leads us to conclude that, even if these genera and species were in existence in the early Miocene period, they must have had a widely different distribution from what they have now. Along with so many African and Indian genera of mammals they then probably inhabited Europe, which at that epoch enjoyed a sub-tropical climate; and this is rendered almost certain by the discovery in the Miocene of France of fossil remains of trogons and jungle-fowl. If, then, these Indian birds date back to the very period during which alone Lemuria could have existed, that continent was quite unnecessary for their introduction into Madagascar, as they could have followed the same track as the mammalia of Miocene Europe and Asia; while if, as I maintain, they are of more recent date, then Lemuria had ceased to exist, and could not have been the means of their introduction.