HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



131 



Himalaya, and carry back his thoughts to a time 

 long ere the first Aryan invader rushed down from 

 the arid highlands of Central Asia on to the fertile 

 plains of Hindustan ; long also ere the earliest of the 

 pre- Aryan aborigines had settled in the latter region, 

 and even to a time vi-hen the very mountains that 

 now form the foot of the Himalaya had no existence, 

 and when the Himalaya proper was but a faint 

 shadow of its present mighty self. At that chrono- 

 logically remote, although geologically recent epoch 

 — considerably before man, as far as we yet know, 

 had made his first appearance on the globe — the 

 regions at the foot of the Himalaya, from the Ganges 

 on the east to the Indus on the west, instead of 

 consisting as now of arid ridges and valleys formed 

 of uptilted strata of clay and sandstone, frequently 

 rising to a height of several thousand feet above the 

 sea-level, were low swampy tracts, covered doubtless 

 in places with thick forest and jungle, and in others 

 consisting of wide, grassy plains, through which the 

 mighty rivers of India flowed in their seaward course. 

 Over that vast expanse of country, which it is quite 

 probable was not then parched by a heat so fierce 

 and intense as that of the Punjab of to-day, there 

 roamed at will a vast assemblage of huge animals ; 

 the like of which the world has never since beheld. 

 As they roamed and wandered, untrammelled by any 

 fear of man and his lethal weapons, some of them 

 from time to time met their death from various 

 natural causes, or from the attacks of one another. 

 Frequently their entire bodies became suddenly 

 engulfed alive in the treacherous quicksands which 

 (as we know from the evidence of the strata of soft 

 silvery sandstone) then, as now, formed the river 

 beds ; or their already bleached skeletons and bones 

 became gradually entombed in the mud and clay of 

 the swamps and morasses. There they remained for 

 countless ages, during which the soil of these old 

 river-beds and swamps has been gradually upraised 

 to form the present mountains at the foot of the 

 Himalaya : and now in every valley and every gorge 

 of these regions there may be found numbers of the 

 petrified bones of the former denizens of plain and 

 forest, washed out from the solid rock by its slow 

 decay, and waiting but the magic hand of the 

 comparative anatomist to make them tell their 

 marvellous story of the glorious profusion to which 

 the animal life of that long past epoch attained. 



In that old Siwalik * epoch, as it is generally 

 called, there roamed over those regions and the 

 present barren plains and deserts of the Punjab and 

 Sind, countless herds of stately giraffes, close akin to 

 those which to-day people the mimosa-groves of 

 Africa, accompanied by droves of extinct species of 

 horses, antelopes, and oxen ; while rhinoceroses of 

 several species lurked in the thicker jungle, and 

 ponderous hippopotami wallowed in the lagoons and 



* So called from the Siwalik Hills/in the neighbourhood of 

 the Ganges valley. 



rivers, as they do now in those of Africa. There, 

 too, might be seen, had there but been human eye to 

 see, countless herds of swine ; some of the species 

 reaching to the size of a hippopotamus, while others 

 were scarcely larger than the existing pigmy-hog of 

 Northern India, lately made known to us by the 

 specimens in the Zoological Gardens. Strangest 

 among the stranger forms of quadrupeds, was the 

 ponderous sivathere, rivalling the elephant in bulk, 

 and bearing on his forehead two pairs of horns or 

 antlers — truly a formidable beast. Side by side with 

 these, and a host of other herbivores, which it would 

 be tedious to enumerate, there roamed a variety of 

 large carnivores ; some like the tigers, hyaenas, and 

 wolves of the present day, and others, like the 

 sabre-toothed tiger of Europe, belonging to types 

 which have completely passed away. 



Leaving, however, all the other animals, our at- 

 tention may be directed more particularly to one 

 group which was especially strongly represented in 

 this old Indian fauna. This group is '^that of the 

 elephants, of which there were no less than twelve 

 distinct species existing at the time in Northern 

 India ; a number far larger than is known in the 

 fossil state from a single region of any other part of 

 the globe, and presenting a marvellous contrast to 

 the group at the present day ; when, as we all know 

 it is represented by but two species, confined re- 

 spectively to the Indian and African regions. 



These twelve fossil Indian elephants, from the 

 characters of their grinding-teeth (which, as the 

 parts most frequently preserved, are of the most 

 importance in the determination of extinct animals), 

 may be i^eadily divided into three main sections, 

 which it will be convenient to term respectively true 

 elephants, intermediate elephants, and primitive 

 elephants. The first section includes only two species, 

 to one of which has been assigned the name of the 

 Sutledj elephant, and to the other that of the flat- 

 headed elephant ; these names having been taken 

 from the district where the remains were first found, 

 and from a peculiarity in the structure of one of the 

 species. The Sutledj elephant in its main characters 

 .was not unlike the living Indian elephant, having tusks 

 in the upper jaw, a short chin to the lower jaw, and the 

 grinding-teeth of great size and depth. Of these teeth, 

 as in living elephants, only one complete tooth was in 

 use at anyone time, the back teeth coming into use only 

 as the early ones wore away and fell out. As it is 

 necessary, in order to comprehend the points alluded 

 to in the sequel, to haVe a clear idea of the structure of 

 these grinding-teeth, a few lines must be devoted to 

 that purpose. These teeth consist of a number of 

 closely packed plates of three different bony sub- 

 stances, and the best idea that the non-anatomical 

 reader can form of their structure is to take a strip 

 of brown cardboard, some three feet in length by four 

 inches in width, and a similar strip of white card- 

 board ; he should then lay the former beneath the latter. 



