Rev. Mr Wheweirs Address to the Geological Society. 155 



give the true geological order of the deposits in this region ; 

 which might then, perhaps, serve as a connecting link between 

 western Asia and India. 



It is among the favourable omens for the geology of India, 

 of which we now see many, that a temperate spirit of gene- 

 ralization has recently been applied to the examination of her 

 soil ; a spirit which contents itself with such a general refe- 

 rence of the foreign to the home strata as we have described, 

 till by its own labours it has earned the right of asserting some 

 closer correspondence. If to deny the value of our geological 

 terms within the home district, where they mark an order 

 which has been repeatedly verified, would be a suicidal scep- 

 ticism in geologists, there would be a rashness and levity no 

 less fatal in applying them to distant regions where no order 

 has yet been ascertained. 



Captain Grant in his account of Cutch, and Mr Malcolmson 

 in his description of a large portion of the India peninsula, 

 have not ventured to call the strata which they have examined 

 by the names which describe European formations. We may- 

 trust that, hereafter, the admirable activity and resource which 

 our countrymen display in that wonderful appendage of our 

 empire, will enable them to communicate to us a genuine Indian 

 arrangement of secondary strata. In the mean time, Mr Mal- 

 colmson has most laudably employed himself in determining the 

 age of the wide-spread igneous rocks of the peninsula of India, 

 with reference to the contiguous strata. And Dr McCleland, 

 who was associated with Mr Griffith in the scientific deputation 

 sent under Dr Wallich into Upper Asam, has, among other 

 geological observations, noted a raised bed, at 1500 feet above 

 the sea level, in which none of the species are identical with 

 those of the Bay of Bengal on the one hand, or the secondary 

 strata on the north of the Himalaya on the other ; but in which 

 a resemblance was at once recognised with the q)ecies of the 

 Paris basin. 



This resemblance between the extinct animal population of 

 regions so remote from each other, is in itself remarkable enough. 

 It is still more curious to observe, that the same coincidence of 

 the ancient animals of France and India has recently been de- 

 tected in another case ; and what makes the circumstance still 



