Turning now to tropical Asia, we find a somewhat analogous series of events, but on a smaller scale and with less strongly-marked results. At the time when tropical and South Africa were so completely cut off from the great northern continent, the peninsula of India with Ceylon was also isolated; and it seems probable that their union with the continent took place at a somewhat later period. The ancient fauna of this south-Asiatic island may be represented by the slow Loris a peculiar type of lemurs, some peculiar rats (Muridæ), and perhaps by the Edentate scaly ant-eater; by its Uropeltidæ a peculiar family of snakes, and by many peculiar genera of snakes and lizards, and a few peculiar amphibia. On the other hand, we must look upon the monkeys, the large carnivora, the deer, the antelopes, the wild pigs, and the elephants, as having overrun the country from the north; and their entrance must, no doubt, have led to the extermination of many of the lower types. But there is another remarkable series of changes which have undoubtedly taken place in Eastern Asia in Tertiary times. There is such a close affinity between the animals of the Sunda Islands and those of the Malay Peninsula and Siam; and between those of Japan and of Northern Asia, that there can be little doubt that these islands once formed a southern and eastern extension of the Asiatic continent. The Philippines and Celebes perhaps also formed a part of this continent; but if so, the peculiarity and poverty of their mammalian fauna shows that they must have been separated at a much earlier period.[68] The other islands probably remained united to the continent till the Pliocene period. The result is seen in the similarity of the flora of Japan to that which prevailed in Europe in Miocene times; while in the larger Malay Islands we find, along with a rich flora developed under long-continued equatorial conditions of uniform heat and moisture, a remnant of the fauna which accompanied it, of which the Malay tapir, the anthropoid apes, the tupaias, the galeopitheci or flying lemurs, and the sun-bears, may be representatives. [68] For a full account of the evidence and conclusions as to these islands see the author’s _Geographical Distribution of Animals_, vol. i. pp. 345, 359, 426, 436.