AND HIS COTEMPOKARIES. 573 



in connection with them, to the then recent inferences ar- 

 rived at by Marcel de Serres, Christol, and Tournal, regard- 

 ing the human bones found in caverns in the south of 

 France, and used the following terms in his notes ' On the 

 Occurrence of the Bones of Man in the Fossil State ': — ' The 

 problem being thus resolved, it follows that man must also 

 be included among the fossil species, or rather that the 

 sudden transition from one condition of being to another 

 must be disallowed, and that the same gradual alteration of 

 species, already so fully developed by M. Deshayes in his 

 comparison of the fossil shells of the different periods of the 

 tertiary formations, must be extended to animals, and per- 

 chance to man himself : in fact, that the barrier of fossil and 

 non-fossil must henceforth be a distinction of convenience 

 only, to separate such remains as may be found buried in 

 the regular geological strata, from those of more modern or 

 accidental inhumation.' ' 



In 1835, while the interest of these Jumna explorations 

 was still fresh, Capt. (now Colonel Sir Proby) Cautley and 

 myself, then occupied with the investigation of the Fossil 

 Fauna of the Sewalik hills, discovered the remains of the 

 extinct gigantic Tortoise of India. This remarkable form 

 was briefly referred to in a memoir communicated to the 

 Geological Society in 1836 ; but the detailed account of it 

 did not appear until 1844. The huge chelonian was inferred 

 to have had a shell twelve feet long, eight feet in diameter, 

 and six feet high ; and the anterior or episternal portion of 

 the plastron exhibited a thickness of 6^ inches of solid bone ; 

 proportions which rendered it a fit object for comparison 

 with the Elephant. The following remarks bearing upon 

 its possible relations to the human period are extracted from 

 the ' Proceedings ' of the Zoological Society in 1844 : 2 



' Colossocheh/s Atlas. — The first fossil remains of this colossal Tortoise 

 were discovered by us in 1835 in the tertiary strata of the Sewalik 

 hills, or Sub-Himalnyahs shirting the southern foot of the great Hima- 

 layah chain. They were found associated with the remains of four 

 extinct species of Mastodon and Elephant, species of Rhinoceros, Hip- 

 popotamus, Horse, Anoplotherium, 3 Camel, Giraffe, Sivatherium, and a 

 vast number of other Mammalia, including four or five species of Quad- 

 rumana. The Sewalik Fauna included also a great number of reptilian 

 forms, such as Crocodiles and land and freshwater Tortoises. Some of 

 the Crocodiles belong to extinct species, but others appear to be abso- 

 lutely identical wilh species now living in the rivers of India : we 

 allude in particular to the Crocodilus longirostrisA from the existing 



1 Journ. Asiat. Soe. Bengal, 1S33. vor: 



ii. p. 631. 



* See vol. i. p. ?65.— [Ed.] 



s Now Chalicotherium Sivahnse, being 

 Nestori/fierium of Kaup. [See vol. i. p. 

 223.— Ed.] 



4 Gavialis Gangeticus. 



