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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.”24

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 rediscovery in the fifteenth century.25 Those names (on several fifteenth-century maps St. Mary’s is Louo, Lovo, or Luovo—“Wolf Island,” cf. Portuguese lobo) are certainly interesting, but they may have been given for some supposed resemblance of outline or other fancy. There is this in favor of Dr. Scharff’s supposition: the name Corvo in its original form Corvis Marinis (Island of the Sea Crows) appears to have been prompted by the abundance of birds of a particular species—possibly cormorants, possibly black skimmers—and not by any typical bird form of the island itself. Also Pico, now named for its peak, was called the Isle of the Doves, and wild doves or pigeons are said to abound still on its mountain side. But, if we assume by analogy that Li Conigi (Rabbit Island) and Capraria (Goat Island) were so named by reason of the pre-Portuguese wild rabbits and goats, these may be the donations of earlier visitants or settlers—Italian, Carthaginians, or what not. We cannot well believe that wolves were voluntarily brought by man to Lovo (Lobo), now St. Mary’s; but here there may have been some mistake, as of dogs run wild or some play of imitative fancy, as before indicated. In any case these archaic island names are a long way from being convincing evidence of former land connection with any continent, still less of the former existence of Atlantis.