58 The Origin and Antiquity of Man. | Jan., 
rative toughness of the quartzite, or to the Indian implements 
having been made by a less cultivated, and therefore, very possibly, 
a more ancient people. 
Mr. Foote appears to be unacquainted with Dr. Falconer’s 
speculation (even in the form in which it was published in 1844), 
as he makes no allusion to it, and mentions no facts having a direct 
bearing on the probable relation of the implement-bearing deposits 
to the Miocene period. ‘To his mind the case is simply as follows:— 
Stone implements, comparable with the flint implements of Kurope, 
occur near Madras in deposits probably identical with those which 
in neighbouring districts underlie the modern alluvium. Therefore 
the Indian deposits are contemporary with the European, and are 
of Quaternary age, if not more recent. : 
In Mr. Foote’s opinion, these deposits, which are composed of 
Lateritic conglomerates and sands, “ were deposited at the bottom of 
a shallow sea studded with mountainous islands, between which 
flowed strong and rapid currents.” These islands are supposed to 
have been either “inhabited or visited by the people who made the 
quartzite implements which are at present the only record of their 
existence.” The greatest height at which quartzite implements 
have been found is 370 feet, so that a considerable period of time 
must have elapsed since the formation of the deposit i which they 
occur ; and presuming that the alluvial deposits overlying them are 
to some extent synchronous with the oldest alluvium of the valley 
of the Ganges, we get a more or less probable measure of their anti- 
quity. But the lapse of time thus indicated by no means carries us 
back to the Miocene period, as the essentially superficial Lateritic 
deposits can hardly be correlated with the highly inclined Sewalik 
strata. 
It therefore appears that from the positive facts now in our pos- 
session we are not justified in assigning a period so remote as the 
Miocene for the advent of man in India. We must therefore return 
to those “considerations of a different order” to which we haye 
before alluded. 
Dr. Falconer writes, “It is not under the hard conditions of the 
Glacial period in Europe that the earliest relics of the human race 
upon the globe are to be sought... . . . It is rather im the 
great alluvial valleys of tropical or sub-tropical rivers, like the 
Ganges, the Irrawaddi, and the Nile, where we may expect to detect 
the vestiges of his earliest abode. It is there where the necessaries 
of life are produced by nature in the greatest variety and profusion, 
and obtained with the smallest effort; there where climate exacts 
the least protection against the vicissitudes of the weather; and 
there where the lower animals which approach man nearest now 
exist, and where their fossil remains turn up in the greatest variety 
and abundance.” 
