138 Asiatic Society. 



Gulf of Cambay ; more particularly on a Gigantic Ruminant, having 

 some affinities to the Sivatherium and the Giraffe." After adverting 

 to former notices of fossils obtained on this island, the writer de- 

 scribed its situation in the midst of the gulf -stream of Cambay, 

 which separates it from the main land, and deposits large quantities 

 of alluvium brought down by the rivers emptying themselves into it. 

 These rivers, in the present day, in the freshes, transport into the 

 Gulf large trees, and the bodies of oxen, deer, bears, and other ani- 

 mals ; and in the great floods of past ages are considered to have 

 brought down and deposited, as now discovered, the remains of rumi- 

 nants and Pachydermata, some extinct and unheard-of, others having, 

 in the present day, their living congeners in the Indian rivers. The 

 bed from which the writer obtained the fossil specimens exhibited is 

 below the usual water-mark, and inaccessible except at the ebb of 

 spring-tides. A portion only of those obtained were brought to 

 England, the remainder were left in India. The most remarkable of 

 those in this country was a large skull, which is now, by competent 

 judges, pronounced to be the first specimen of a new genus. The 

 mass of conglomerate which contained it weighed about 170 lbs., and 

 the separation of the skull from near 100 lbs. of matrix occupied Mr. 

 Bettington many weeks. The skull, on the whole, is well-preserved, 

 though a portion has suffered from the action of water. The lines 

 of teeth on the two sides of the palate are unconformable ; and it has 

 been conjectured that the head must at this part have suffered from 

 violence, but there is no appearance of fracture. For the purposes of 

 comparison, Mr. Bettington had made a close measurement of every 

 part of the Perim fossil, of the Sivatherium, and of the skull of the 

 adult giraffe in the British Museum ; from all which it appeared that 

 the Perim fossil is the smaller. The teeth are similar in number and 

 character to those of the Sivatherium, and are somewhat smaller, as 

 the comparative size of the heads would lead us to expect A marked 

 distinction between the two is found in the excess in width of the 

 cranium at the vertex, being in the Sivatherium twenty-two inches, 

 and in the Perim fossil little more than eleven inches, in which cha- 

 racter the latter approaches nearer to the giraffe. But the greatest 

 point of difference is in the form and position of the horns. In the 

 Sivatherium the horns bear somewhat the same relation to each other 

 as in the four-horned antelope ; whereas, in the fossil under consi- 

 deration, the anterior horns rise from a confluent base measuring 

 twenty-five inches, the horns above the line of division measuring 

 eighteen inches. This formation the writer considers to be without 

 precedent in the animal kingdom, fossil or recent. The general 

 character, cancellar structure, and extensive development of the pro- 

 tuberance at the lower edge of the transverse ridge of the occiput, 

 compel the conviction that it was a posterior horn, " reflected" as in 

 the common Indian buft'alo, and must have produced an appearance 

 truly monstrous. The whole formation indicates great force and 

 power. Among the other fossils, there were some identical with 

 those of the Sevalik hills, and others peculiar, as yet, to Perim. 

 Among the latter was a new Crocodilean. There were specimens of 



