Revieivs — The Great Indian Desert, 509 



amongst the diversity of subjects to which the Asiatic Society of 

 Bengal devotes itself. 



Two subjects come into consideration in dealing with the Physical 

 Geography of the Indian Desert — the zoology of the region and its 

 recent geological history. Mr. Blanford adduces the connexion be- 

 tween the zoology of India and the fauna of Africa and the Mascarine 

 islands in support of the idea that India formed part of a great 

 tropical continent. An even more extended connexion is further 

 mentioned as having characterized the life of the upper Palseozoic (?), 

 Mesozoic, Tertiary and later periods ; identical species amongst the 

 flora of these earlier and Secondary times having been found in 

 Australia, Southern Africa, and India (to which might have been 

 added England, Dhagistan, and China) — while there have been 

 three distinct Tertiary migrations into India of animals having 

 African affinities ; two groups of these having been earlier immi- 

 grants than the other. 



Another circumstance noticed is that the peninsular region of 

 India presents no similarity in a geological point of view with the 

 Himalayan tract, or the countries west of the Indus or east of 

 the Bay of Bengal. To this there is, however, one exception in 

 the occurrence of some Damuda rocks on the flanks of the Eastern 

 Himalaya. How far the observation may coincide with any sup- 

 posed continental extension of India in Secondary times, when 

 similar species of plants grew over so large an area of the eastern 

 hemisphere, is scarcely apparent. But perhaps the author would 

 not carry the continental conditions so far back upon the evidence of 

 the plants, and may advocate these conditions for a more recent period 

 only, but still the identity of forms in the fossil flora of Peninsular 

 India, South Africa, China, Australia, etc., seems opposed to the 

 utter geological isolation of Peninsular India pointed out. 



With reference to this Peninsular region, it is also stated that, 

 " wherever remains of sedimentary beds are found " " of any age 

 from the dawn of life to the present day, they consist with but few 

 and local exceptions of rocks which have been formed in all proba- 

 bility on the surface of the land." This appears at first a rather 

 strong statement, but contains within itself a qualifying allusion to 

 the fact that large formations among the older sedimentary rocks of 

 Peninsular India are unfossiliferous. Ere this, Mr. Blanford has 

 successfully contended for the sub -aerial origin of the " Deccan 

 Traps," though the mode of their extension over thousands of square 

 miles as horizontally bedded igneous rocks in local sheets uncon- 

 nected with volcanic cones, has never been explained : but it is an 

 entirely new idea that so much of the sedimentary rocks of the 

 Peninsula of India as the passage quoted would seem to say have 

 also been formed on land. 



Being somewhat outside \h.Q subject of the paper, or remotely con- 

 nected, it is not stated by what agency the beds have been deposited 

 — whether by rivers, or land-locked or inland waters other than the 

 sea. If the supposed continental conditions are relied upon here, 

 the author would antedate them further than we thought at first. 



