Chapter 29

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It is to be remarked, however, that Mr. Wallace does not accept Mr. Sclater’s idea, and even opposes it. Mr. Sclater supposes a land or continent formerly uniting Africa, Madagascar, and India but not Australia and India; and Mr. A. R. Wallace shows, in his Geographical Distribution of Animals and Island Life, that the hypothesis of such a land is quite uncalled for on the alleged zoological grounds. But he admits that a much closer proximity of India and Australia did certainly exist, and at a time so very remote that it was “certainly pre-tertiary,” adding in a private letter that “no name has been given to this supposed land.” Yet the land did exist, and was of course “pre-tertiary,” for Lemuria, if we accept this name for the third Continent, had perished before Atlantis fully developed, and Atlantis had sunk and its chief portions disappeared before the end of the Miocene period.