my judgment on this subject on a level with yours. A wonderfully good
paper was published about a year ago on India, in the "Geological Journal,"
I think by Blanford. (391/4. H.F. Blanford "On the Age and Correlations
of the Plant-bearing Series of India and the Former Existence of an Indo-
Oceanic Continent" ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." XXXI., 1875, page 519). The
name Gondwana-Land was subsequently suggested by Professor Suess for this
Indo-Oceanic continent. Since the publication of Blanford's paper, much
literature has appeared dealing with the evidence furnished by fossil
plants, etc., in favour of the existence of a vast southern continent.)
Ramsay agreed with me that it was one of the best published for a long
time. The author shows that India has been a continent with enormous
fresh-water lakes, from the Permian period to the present day. If I
remember right, he believes in a former connection with S. Africa.

I am sure that I read, some twenty to thirty years ago in a French journal,
an account of teeth of Mastodon found in Timor; but the statement may have
been an error. (391/5. In a letter to Falconer (Letter 155), January 5th,
1863, Darwin refers to the supposed occurrence of Mastodon as having been
"smashed" by Falconer.)

With respect to what you say about the colonising of New Zealand, I
somewhere have an account of a frog frozen in the ice of a Swiss glacier,
and which revived when thawed. I may add that there is an Indian toad
which can resist salt-water and haunts the seaside. Nothing ever
astonished me more than the case of the Galaxias; but it does not seem
known whether it may not be a migratory fish like the salmon. (391/6. The
only genus of the Galaxidae, a family of fresh-water fishes occurring in
New Zealand, Tasmania, and Tierra del Fuego, ranging north as far as
Queensland and Chile (Wallace's "Geographical Distribution," II., page
448).)