XXVI 



BIOGEAPIIICAL SKETCH. 



blended. Being a remote provincial station, with at that 

 time only half-a-dozen Euroj)ean families, the white man 

 had to draw on local means in all emergencies where the 

 appliances of civilized life were required; but the intelligence, 

 docility, and exquisite manual dexterity of the natives, backed 

 by their faith in the guiding head of the European, furnished 

 an inexhaustible fund of resource. To constnact, for example, 

 a barometer for mountain explorations, broken tumblers were 

 melted and blown into a tube ; mercury was distilled from 

 cinnabar purchased in the bazaar ; a reservoir was turned out 

 of box- wood felled in the mountains ; and finally a brass scale 

 was cast, shaped, and even graduated, by a native blacksmith, 

 under the superintending eye of the amateur. Or again, he 

 might be seen superintending the expression of some indi- 

 genous oil as a substitute for salad oil, when the European 

 supply had been exhausted. Such discipline was of infinite 

 value in trahaing the young ofiicer to habits of self-reliance 

 and to kindly relations with those among whom his lot was 

 cast, and no doubt contributed to that great fund of uni- 

 versal information for which Falconer was afterwards so 

 remarkable. 



In 1831 Dr. Falconer commenced his field explorations, by 

 investigating the geological formation of the Sewalik Hills. 

 Captain Herbert, in his mineralogical survey of the N. W. 

 Himalayahs, had referred the Sub-Himalayahs to the age of 

 the ' New Red Sandstone ; ' but Dr. Falconer, on his first 

 visit, from finding beds of incoherent gravel covering the 

 northern slope of the range, from the occurrence of seams of 

 lignite and dicotyledonous woods discovered by Lieutenant 

 Cautley in 1827, and from the mineral characters of the 

 different strata, inferred that they were of a tertiary age, 

 and analogous to the Molasse of Switzerland.^ Thirty years 

 of subsequent research by other geologists have not altered 

 that determination, although our exact knowledge of the 

 formation has been greatly extended. Early in 1834 Dr. 

 Falconer gave a brief account of the Sewalik Hills, describing 

 their physical features and geological structure, with the 

 fii'st published section showing their relation to the Hima- 

 layahs.'^ The name ' Sewalik ' had been vaguely applied 



' Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 

 March 1832, toI. i. p. 96; and letter 

 to the late Professor Jameson of 



Edinburgh University, February 8, 

 1836. J 



" lb., Tol. iii. p. ] 82. " 



