198 7. H. D. La Touche—Relics of Ice Age in India. 
large dimensions, much larger than the puny streams of that country 
could now account for. 
In following down the valleys we have seen that the features 
peculiar to the upper, still glaciated regions are reproduced at the 
lower levels, but that the causes that led to the production of these 
features at these lower levels have now passed away. What is more 
likely to have been the cause of these similar phenomena than a 
similarity of conditions, that lowering of temperature and consequent 
increase in the power of the erosive agencies which we call the Glacial 
Period; one which we know to have occurred in times geologically 
recent, but long enough ago to account for the erosion that has since 
taken place ?. 
It remains now to extend the argument to the plains of India, but 
it is not to be expected that the evidence in this region will be of so 
convincing a character as that afforded by the Himalayan valleys. 
There is some direct evidence, it is true, that the plains participated, 
as was only natural, in the general refrigeration of climate afforded by 
the fact that a large number of Himalayan plants are found on the 
higher hills and plateaus of the Peninsula, and that, as I am informed 
by Dr. Annandale, of the Indian Museum, a small portion of the 
fauna of Parasnath Hill in Bengal is of a type peculiar to the 
Himalaya; showing that the temperature of the intervening plains 
must have been lowered sufficiently, and that for a long enough 
period, to allow these plants and animals to wander so far to the 
south. But this evidence is not of the character that I am dealing 
with at present. Since the ice and snow did not actually descend to 
the plains, their influence on the deposits of the latter can only have 
been of a secondary character, and to a great extent these must have 
been obliterated by the divagations of the great rivers, so that only 
the merest relics now remain. 
Throughout the valley of the Ganges and its tributaries patches of 
what is known as the ‘older alluvium’ are to be found, rising to 
a considerable height, often as much as 100 feet, above the present 
flood-levels. This alluvium is generally to be distinguished from the 
later river-silts by its red colour, which has given the name of 
Rangamati, ‘coloured earth,’ to so many villages in Bengal and 
Assam; and by its containing quantities of the peculiar nodular form of 
limestone known as ‘kunkur’, the presence of which is in itself a sign 
that the deposits are of considerable antiquity, for it owes its origin 
to the slow accretion of particles of carbonate of lime dissolved out 
of the slightly calcareous sediments by percolating water, and re- 
deposited in the form of nodules as the water evaporates. 
One of the most conspicuous instances of this old alluvium is the 
elevated tract known as the Madhupur Jungle, extending to the north 
of Dacca between the present channel of the Brahmaputra and its old 
course into the Meghna. The soil of this tract is a stiff red clay, 
evidently an old river-silt, but raised to a height of some 60 to 100 feet 
above the flood-levels of the rivers on either side. Several other 
patches occur in the lower Ganges valley, but as we ascend the river 
and its tributaries into the United Provinces and Bundelkhand, we 
find that. this older alluvium is almost universally distributed, and has 
