576 



PRIMEVAL MAN, 



entered so much at length on them on this occasion, from the important 

 bearing which the point has on a very remarkable matter of early belief 

 entertained by a large portion of the human race. The result at which 

 we have arrived is, that there are fair grounds for entertaining the 

 belief as probable that the Colossochelys Atlas may have lived down 

 to an early epoch of the human period, and become extinct since : — 

 1st, from the fact that other Chelonian species and Crocodiles, con- 

 temporaries of the Colossochelys in the Sewalik Fauna, have survived; 

 2nd, from the indications of mythology in regard to a gigantic species 

 of Tortoise in India.' — Proceed. Zool. Soc. Lond. 1844. Part xii. 

 p. 85. 1 



It is not meant to be urged now, after a lapse of more 

 than twenty years, that any serious claim can be preferred 

 on the speculation put forward in the passages above cited. 

 But it will perhaps be admitted that the mind of the observer 

 from whom it emanated was then occupied with, the subject 

 of the possibility of the remote antiquity of man in India, 

 on palseontological evidence. 2 It is true that the expressed 

 view is that the Colossochelys may have lived down to an 

 early epoch of the human period ; and not that man had 

 lived back to be a cotemporary of the Tortoise, now proved 

 to have been Miocene. But the two views are reciprocal ; 

 and the form of expression selected on the occasion was 

 that which was least calculated to provoke ridicule, or to 

 shock the strong' prejudices on the subject which were then 

 dominant among educated men. And so firmly was — not 

 merely the possibility, but — the probability of the case im- 

 pressed upon our minds, that Capt. Cautley and myself were 

 constantly on the look-out for the turning up, in some shape 

 or other, of evidences of man out of the strata of the Sewalik 

 hills, partly from considerations of a different order, to 

 which I shall briefly allude. 



The cataclysmic speculations of Cuvier and the Diluvial 

 theory of Buckland were then exploded. The wide spread 

 of the plains of India showed no signs of the unstratined 

 superficial Gravels, Sands, and Clays, which for a long time 

 were confidently additced as evidence that a great Diluvial 

 wave had suddenly passed over Europe and other continents, 

 overwhelming terrestrial life, and leaving the marks of its 

 course and violent action in these enormous deposits of 

 transported debris. Every section along the Gangetic plain 

 indicated that the superficial strata there were of local 

 origin, and the result of tranquil sedimentary deposition. 

 Viewed in the light of a strictly ph} r ?.ical inquiry, the chief 



1 Reproduced in vol. i. p. 368. — [Ed.] 



2 As additional evidence on this 

 point, the reader is referred to the note 



appended to the memoir on Emps 

 tecta, written in 1S44. See vol. i. p. 

 388.— [En.] 



