Eight species of Reptiles and Amphibia--some of which I have just referred to--are enumerated by Dr. Forsyth Major as occurring eastward and westward of the Italian peninsula (and almost all also in North Africa) without being known on the mainland of Italy. And in order to show that Sardinia and Corsica are more closely related to North Africa than to Italy, he indicates the general range of the Reptiles and Amphibians found in these islands. Of the twenty-one species, only twelve inhabit Italy, but at least sixteen North Africa and seventeen Spain. Indeed, he shows that Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, and North-west Africa form a zoogeographical province, from which Italy, with the exception of a few localities on its west coast, is excluded. It is a remarkable fact that there are a few localities on the west coast of Italy which in their fauna and flora exhibit closer relationship with Corsica and Sardinia than with the mainland. Thus Dr. Major pointed out that the _Catena Mettalifera_, the _Monte Argentario_, and _Monte Circeo_ all belong to what we may call the former Tyrrhenian continent. They are to be regarded as its eastern limits, which remained standing, while the central portion--now occupied by the Tyrrhenian Sea--subsided, and is at present covered by deep sea. Subsequently these remnants of the old continent became joined with the newly-formed Italian peninsula, but the plants and animals belonging to the older flora and fauna were mostly destroyed by newer and more vigorous immigrants. A few of the more hardy ones survived, and are a standing testimony of the geographical revolutions of that part of Southern Europe. That the Mediterranean area has undergone such profound geographical changes as I have endeavoured to indicate is no new theory. Many zoologists who have investigated the fauna of that region, and have attempted to explain the faunistic relations, had to acknowledge that the migrations must have taken place under geographical conditions entirely different from those obtaining at present. Rütimeyer long ago remarked that it seemed to him much more probable that Morocco, Algeria, and Tunis were peopled by way of Gibraltar, and perhaps also by Sicily and Malta from Europe, than Southern Europe from Africa. After careful conchological researches in the Western Mediterranean region, Dr. Kobelt came to the conclusion that formerly Southern Spain and Morocco must have been united by a broad land-connection. Sicily and Algeria do not apparently show any very intimate relationship conchologically, but farther west--in the mountains of Tetuan--Dr. Kobelt discovered a colony of Sicilian forms.[3] "The close relationship," remarks Dr. Major (_a_, p. 106), "shown in the fauna of Corsica and Sardinia to Africa, permits the supposition that the connection with these islands had persisted to a much more recent date than that with Europe."