CONNECTION WITH EUROPE AND AFRICA 21 many of which are of European-Mediterranean affinities of late Tertiary time, we see that the evidence appears to indicate clearly that the Cape Verde and Canary Islands are fragments of a greater Africa. . . What evidence there may be to show that this fracturing and breaking down of western Africa took place as suddenly as related by Plato or that it occurred about 10,000 years ago is as yet unknown to geologists. 11 Termier puts in evidence as biological corroboration the re- searches of Louis Germain, especially in the mollusca, which have convinced him of the continental origin of this fauna in the four archipelagoes, the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, and Cape Verde. He also notes a few species still living in the Azores and the Canaries, though extinct in Europe, but found as fossils in Pliocene rocks of Portugal. He deduces from this a connection between the islands and the Iberian Peninsula down to some period during the Pliocene. 13 Dr. Scharff has devoted some space and assiduous effort to similar considerations. He reviews the insular flora and fauna, pointing out that some of the forms common to the islands, or some of them, and a now distant continent could hardly have reached there over sea. He comes to the following conclusion: "I believe they [the islands] were still connected, in early Pleistocene times, with the continents of Europe and Africa, at a time when man had already made his appearance in western Europe, and was able to reach the islands by land." 13 He also points out that the Azores Islands were first known and named for their hawks, which feed largely on small mammalia, that presumably would have come thither overland, and also points out that some of the islands were named in Italian on old maps Rabbit Island, Goat Island, etc., before the Portuguese re- discovery in the fifteenth century. 14 Those names (on several fifteenth-century maps St. Mary's is Louo, Lovo, or Luovo "Wolf Island," cf. Portuguese lobo) are certainly interesting, 11 Geogr. Rev., Vol. 3, 1917, p. 65. "Termier, pp. 231 and 232. " R. F. Scharff: Some Remarks on the Atlantis Problem, Proc. Royal Irish A cad.. Vol. 24, Section B, 1903, pp. 268-302; reference on p. 297. 14 Idem: European Animals: Their Geological History and Geographical Distri- bution, London and New York, 1907, pp. 102 and 104.
