CAMEL. 243 



a few supplementary remarks, which a re-perusal of the original paper 

 published in the ' Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,' with 

 reference to the paragraph above quoted, renders necessary. 



To those who have interested themselves in the discovery of the 

 fossil remains, which has been made in the Sewaliks, it need hardly be 

 necessary to alliKle to the two very distinct states in which the mine- 

 ralization has taken place : that in which the fossil is impregnated 

 more or less with iron in the form of a hydrate, and that where the cal- 

 careous elements of the bone are nearly or entirely unaltered, and the 

 medullary hollows filled with matrix ; the former universally existing 

 in those remains extracted from the sandstone rock, the latter, from the 

 subordinate beds or substrata, either consisting of clay, or of an admix- 

 ture of cla3% sand, and shingle. The difference in external appearance 

 is remarkable, the sandstone fossil being to a common observer an 

 organic siibstance converted into stone, whereas that which is found in 

 the clay strata not only conveys an idea of a lesser antiquity, but looks 

 like a substance merely in a progressive state of petrifaction. 



As the beds of clay, &c., are inferior in position to the extensive 

 sandstone strata, the palm of antiquity rests with the fossils of the clay ; 

 these very imperfect and half-fossilized looking remains being evidently 

 of older date than those of the sandstone. 



With very few exceptions, the only remains that have been dis- 

 covered, scattered on the face of the mountains or in the ravines and 

 water-courses which drain them, are those from the sandstone strata. 

 Those from the lower beds appear to be of a quality too little indurated 

 to withstand the effects of weather and exposure. The greater pro- 

 portion of the latter, amongst which are some of our most interesting 

 genera, viz. Simla, Anoplotheria, Camelidse, &c., were exhumed — re- 

 moved out of the parent strata in which they were originally embedded. 

 The remains of Ruminants and Rhinoceroses brovight to light in this way 

 were singularly striking : numeroiis ci'aniaof both families — in many cases 

 not having shed their milk-teeth — being found closely and compactly 

 embedded together, the stratum of rock being a perfect Golgotha, not 

 of the skeletons of old and worn-oiit animals, but of those that were cut 

 off when young or in the prime of their existence. 



In the osteology of the camel there are certain distinctive marks 

 which at once separate it from the true Ruminantia, laying aside the 

 peculiarities of the cervical vertebrae, in the absence of perforations 

 for the vertebral arteries in their transverse processes, which, with the 

 atlas excepted, is universal in the family, and separates it not only fi-om 

 the Ruminants, but from all other existing Mammalia. There are two 

 very simple points of difference which can never be mistaken by the 

 most careless observer, the first being the want of anchylosis in the 

 lower extremities of the metatarsal and metacarpal bones, that of the 

 camel exhibiting itself in a cleft or separation of the two bones to a 

 distance of two or three inches from the articulating surface, whilst the 

 same bones of the Ruminants are perfectly undivided ; and, secondly, 

 the marked distinction existing in the carpal bones of the camel, in 

 the separation of the scaphoid and cuboid, these two bones being joined 

 together in the true Ruminantia. 



Of these metatarsal and metacarpal bones, we have forwarded speci- 



kmens both to the British Museum and to the Geological Society of 



I 



