"3rd. India, South Africa and Australia were connected by an Indo-Oceanic Continent in the Permian epoch; and the two former countries remained connected (with at the utmost only short interruptions) up to the end of the Miocene period. During the latter part of the time this land was also connected with Malayana.
"4th. In common with some previous writers, I consider that the position of this land was defined by the range of coral reefs and banks that now exist between the Arabian sea and East Africa.
"5th. Up to the end of the Nummulitic epoch no direct connexion (except possibly for short periods) existed between India and Western Asia."
In the discussion which followed the reading of the paper, Professor Ramsay "agreed with the author in the belief in the junction of Africa with India and Australia in geological times."
Mr. Woodward "was pleased to find that the author had added further evidence, derived from the fossil flora of the mesozoic series of India, in corroboration of the views of Huxley, Sclater and others as to the former existence of an old submerged continent ('Lemuria') which Darwin's researches on coral reefs had long since foreshadowed."
"Of the five now existing continents," writes Ernst Haeckel, in his great work "The History of Creation,"[11] "neither Australia, nor America, nor Europe can have been this primæval home [of man], or the so-called 'Paradise,' the 'cradle of the human race.' Most circumstances indicate Southern Asia as the locality in question. Besides Southern Asia, the only other of the now existing continents which might be viewed in this light is Africa. But there are a number of circumstances (especially chorological facts) which suggest that the primeval home of man was a continent now sunk below the surface of the Indian Ocean, which extended along the south of Asia, as it is at present (and probably in direct connection with it), towards the east, as far as Further India and the Sunda Islands; towards the west, as far as Madagascar and the south-eastern shores of Africa. We have already mentioned that many facts in animal and vegetable geography render the former existence of such a South Indian continent very probable. Sclater has given this continent the name of Lemuria, from the semi-apes which were characteristic of it. By assuming this Lemuria to have been man's primæval home, we greatly facilitate the explanation of the geographical distribution of the human species by migration."
In a subsequent work, "The Pedigree of Man," Haeckel asserts the existence of Lemuria at some early epoch of the earth's history as an acknowledged fact.
The following quotation from Dr. Hartlaub's writings may bring to a close this portion of the evidence in favour of the existence of the lost Lemuria:—[12]
"Five and thirty years ago, Isidore Geoffrey St. Hilaire remarked that, if one had to classify the Island of Madagascar exclusively on zoological considerations, and without reference to its geographical situation, it could be shown to be neither Asiatic nor African, but quite different from either, and almost a fourth continent. And this fourth continent could be further proved to be, as regards its fauna, much more different from Africa, which lies so near to it, than from India which is so far away. With these words the correctness and pregnancy of which later investigations tend to bring into their full light, the French naturalist first stated the interesting problem for the solution of which an hypothesis based on scientific knowledge has recently been propounded, for this fourth continent of Isidore Geoffrey is Sclater's 'Lemuria'—that sunken land which, containing parts of Africa, must have extended far eastwards over Southern India and Ceylon, and the highest points of which we recognise in the volcanic peaks of Bourbon and Mauritius, and in the central range of Madagascar itself—the last resorts of the almost extinct Lemurine race which formerly peopled it."
Evidence obtained from Archaic Records.