AND HIS COTEMPOEARIES. 577 



rational argument in support of the opinion that the advent 

 of man upon the earth dates from a very modern epoch, was 

 first, the negative evidence in the non-occurrence of human 

 relics, and next the fact, that taking him in conjunction 

 with the Mammals, with whom he is now associated, they 

 appeared, as a group, to belong to a new order of things 

 strikingly different from that of the immediately preceding 

 period. The Mammoths, the wool-clad Rhinoceros, the 

 Cave-Lions, and Spelaean Hyaenas, the Irish Elk, &c. of the 

 European fauna were all extinct, although the carcasses of 

 some of them had been discovered, under favourable circum- 

 stances, in the most perfect state of preservation. Facts of 

 corresponding import were yielded by a glance cast upon 

 the latest palaeontology of the American Continent. There 

 also the huge extinct Edentata, the Mammoth, and the 

 Mastodon indicated a different order of life, especially from 

 that now existing. But in India the problem presented itself 

 under another aspect. There, no break was visible in the 

 tranquil succession of deposits, no interference of a general 

 oceanic submergence, followed by incoherent beds of sand 

 and gravel, no intercalation of glacial phenomena to disturb 

 the previous system. The present physical order of things — 

 modified only by alterations of level, by upheavements and 

 depressions— could be traced back, in an unbroken chain, to 

 the ossiferous strata of the Valley of the Nerbudda and of 

 the Sewalik hills. Results in harmony with these indica- 

 tions were yielded by a retrospect cast upon the system of 

 organized life. The Mastodons, the Stegodons, and the Loxodon 

 Elephants were extinct, as were also the Sivatherium, the 

 Chalicotherium, the three-toed Hipparion-Horse, the Hexapro- 

 todon, the Merycopotamus, and other peculiar forms. But 

 they were found associated in the same Sewalik deposits with 

 species of true Equus, of Camel and of Giraffe, the two last 

 being characteristic cotemporaries of man at the present 

 time. The Pliocene fauna of the Nerbudda Yalley produced, 

 along with the Miocene Stegodon insignis of the Sewalik 

 hills, an extinct Elephant, E. Namadicus, the dental system 

 of which is closely allied to that of the existing Indian 

 species ; a true Hippopotamus, and not to mention others, a 

 true Taurine Ox, Bos Namadicus, and a huge Buffalo, B. 

 (Bubalus) Palwindimts, which is nearly approached by the 

 living ' Arnee ' of the foi-ests of Assam, being the stock from 

 which the domestic Buffalo of Oriental countries is sup- 

 posed to have sprung. That the actual order of the present 

 system of life had begun during the Sewalik period, was 

 indicated by the living Gharial ' Crocodile and Emys tenia % 



1 See vol. i. p. 350, note 1.— [Ed.] 

 VOL. II. P P 



