III. Lemuria.

The third Continent, we propose to call Lemuria. The name is an invention, or an idea, of Mr. P. L. Sclater, who, between 1850 and 1860, asserted on zoological grounds the actual existence, in prehistoric times, of a Continent which he showed to have extended from Madagascar to Ceylon and Sumatra. It included some portions of what is now Africa; but otherwise this gigantic Continent, which stretched from the Indian Ocean to Australia, has now wholly disappeared beneath the waters of the Pacific, leaving here and there only some of its highland tops which are now islands. Mr. A. R. Wallace, the Naturalist, writes Mr. Charles Gould: Extends the Australia of Tertiary periods to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and perhaps to Fiji, and from its marsupial types infers a connection with the northern continent during the Secondary period.(17) The subject is treated at length elsewhere.(18)