Let us now follow one of the miocene Oriental migrants starting from Central Asia on its way to Europe. Very soon after leaving its home, it must have encountered a sea which extended at that time from the Eastern Mediterranean to the borders of Afghanistan. In following a westward course, the emigrant was compelled to keep along the northern shore of it. We do not know the state of the physical geography of the region between the Black Sea and the Tianshan Mountains, but it seems certain that a considerable extent of dry land enabled a wanderer from Central or Southern Asia to reach the Balkan peninsula by skirting the northern shore of that large miocene sea. No miocene deposits occur north of Teheran or of the Upper Euphrates, nor are they known from the islands of the Ægean Sea or the lands surrounding it. From the Balkan peninsula it was possible for our migrant to reach the European Alps, which were then slowly rising as a peninsula out of the western portion of the great miocene sea. What are now the Alps was then hilly ground, which was being raised from the bottom of the sea. It was no doubt connected with the Balkan peninsula, so that an intercourse of species could take place between this newly-formed peninsula and Central Asia. I say peninsula, because the miocene sea almost completely surrounded it. From the Western Mediterranean a wide gulf extended up the Rhone valley into that of the Rhine as far north as Maintz. Then skirting along the northern outliers of the Tyrol, the gulf can be followed as far east as Transylvania. It is quite probable that it extended much farther east still, but there is as yet no geological evidence forthcoming. At any rate, our Asiatic migrant turning northward from the Balkan peninsula found its farther progress barred once more by an arm of the same sea which in its earlier peregrinations had stopped it from going south (cf. Suess, i., p. 406).
In later miocene times the sea does not seem to have surrounded the Alps to the same extent as it did before, but it certainly extended from the Eastern Alps to the shores of the Sea of Asov, so that the direct northward passage was still more or less barred to the Oriental immigrants. At the same time Alpine species were now able to emigrate to the North European provinces. During the last stages of this epoch, the same sea increased its area very considerably in an eastward direction. One continuous expanse of water now stretched from the Alps as far as the Sea of Aral in Central Asia, perhaps even farther.