40 Mr. Prinsep and Col. Colvin's Notice of 



confess we have a degree of scepticism, which can only be re- 

 moved by a certainty, that the fossil had been seen extracted 

 from the matrix. In the first place, the great extent of the 

 worn surface and its perfect flatness could hardly be caused 

 by attrition against the lower canine, which should produce a 

 curvature measured by the length of the jaw as radius. In 

 the next place, the enamel of the tooth is less worn than the 

 interior and softer part of the fossil ; and, thirdly, on exami- 

 nation with a magnifier, numerous scratches are visible in divers 

 directions : all these indicating that the facet may have been 

 produced o?i the fossil, by grinding it on a file, or some hard 

 flat surface. On showing the fossil to Madhusudana, the me- 

 dical pandit of the Hindu College, he at once pronounced 

 that the tooth had been ground down to be used in medicine, 

 being a sovereign specific in the native pharmacopoeia. This 

 circumstance need not necessarily affect the question, for it is 

 probable that the native druggist would commence his rub- 

 bing on the natural plane, if any presented itself to his choice ; 

 but Dr. Falconer and Captain Cautley, to whom we have re- 

 turned the fossil with a communication of our doubts, assure 

 us in reply that the fossil tooth was brought in along with a 

 large collection, so that there is every improbability of its 

 having been in possession of a native druggist. At any rate, 

 it is not on the front wear that they so much rest their f.rgu- 

 ment of its origin, as on the posterior abrasion, which could 

 only happen in the jaw of a quadrumanous animal. In fact, 

 they have recent quadrumana showing precisely similar wear 

 on a small scale, and no other head will do so. We find 

 only one exception in the Society's Museum, viz., the tapir, 

 whose right upper incisor (or non-salient canine) falling be- 

 tween the two lower ones, is worn nearly in the fashion of the 

 fossil ; but it is less elongated. 



XI. 'Notice of additional Fragments of the Sivatherium,* 

 [With Figures : Plate II.] 



BEFORE Colonel Colvin's departure for Europe, we re- 

 quested permission to take a cast of the beautifully pre- 

 served lower jaw of the Sivatherium which he exhibited at the 

 Government House scientific party in January last [1837]. In 

 further token of his zeal for science, and of his ever-readiness 

 to oblige, he has, even in the hurry of embarkation, favoured 

 us with the accompanying lithographic drawings of the same 

 jaw, and of the larger fragment of the occiput, also on its 

 way to adorn some cabinet of fossil osteology in his native 



• From the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. vi. p. 152 j 

 being a communication by the Secretary, James Prinsep, Esq., F.R.S. 



