BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. xlv 



of the excavations of lake-basins by glacial action was brought 

 forward, be took a share in the discussion, and combated the 

 view by an appeal to the contradictory evidence furnished by 

 the Himalayahs, the lakes of Lonibardy, and the Dead Sea. 

 In connection with this subject it may be mentioned that his 

 last public act — the last occasion in fact in which he left his 

 house — was to attend the Council meeting of the Eoyal 

 Society, with the object of advocating the grant of 1001. to 

 Sir Henry James, for accurately determinuig by levelling the 

 amount of depression of the Dead Sea below the level of the 

 Mediterranean, an object which since Dr. Falconer's death 

 has been accomplished.^ 



In 1861 Dr. Falconer gave important evidence before the 

 Eoyal Commission appointed to inquire into the sanitary 

 condition of India. He distinguished between the removable 

 and the irremovable causes of disease, and under the latter 

 he ranked excessive heat and excessive moisture as telling 

 most on the health. He expressed the opinion that fever 

 often resulted from malaria produced by vegetable decompo- 

 - sition. 



For nearly thirty years Dr. Falconer had been engaged 

 more or less with the investigation of a subject which has 

 lately occupied much of the attention both of men of science 

 and of the educated classes generally, viz. the proofs of the 

 remote antiquity of the human race. In 1833, fossil bones 

 procured from a great depth in the ancient alluvium of the 

 Valley of the Ganges in Hindostan were erroneously figured 

 and published as human. The subject attracted much atten- 

 tion at the time in India. It was in 1835, while the interest 

 was still fresh, that Dr. Falconer and Captain Cautley dis- 

 covered the remains of the gigantic Miocene fossil Tortoise of 

 India, which by its colossal size realized the mythological 

 conception of the Tortoise which sustained the Elephant and 

 the World together on its back.^ In the same formations as 

 the Golossochelys the remains were discovered of a smaller Tor- 

 toise, identical with the existing Emys tecta. About the same 

 time also several species of fossil Quadrumana were disco- 

 vered in the Sewalik Hills, one of which was thought to 

 have exceeded the Orang-Outang, while another was hardly 



' See vol. ii. p. 6.35. * See vol. i. p. 367. 



