578 PRIMEVAL MAN, 



referred to in the above extract as being found associated 

 with the extinct mammalian forms. And of the latter, some, 

 like Stegodon insignis, accompanied by a species of Hexa- 

 protodon, descended to the Pliocene period of the Nerbudda 

 fanna, to be associated with a true Taurine Ox and with a 

 Buffalo which hardly appears to differ more from the living 

 Arnee than does the ancient Bison prisons from the living 

 Aurochs. Another fact chimed in with especial force. 

 Among the four or five species of Sewalik Quadrumana 

 alluded to above, one was inferred by Sir Proby Cautley and 

 myself, in 1837, to have been a large Ape, exceeding the size 

 of the Orang-Outang, but of unknown immediate affinity. 

 This opinion was founded upon a canine tooth of an old 

 animal, which is figured and described in the Journal of 

 the Asiatic Society of Bengal. 1 Five years afterwards, in 

 1842, I instituted a close comparison between the fossil 

 specimen and the corresponding tooth of three skulls of the 

 Orang-Outang, contained in the Museum of the Asiatic 

 Society in Calcutta, and found that their agreement was so 

 close, that I conjectured that the extinct Sewalik form had 

 been a large Ape allied to Pithecus satyrus. 2 



A quadrumanous astragalus, derived from the same strata, 

 approached, in form and proportions, so near to that of the 

 existing Hoonuman Monkey, Scmnopitliecus entellus, that the 

 help of the callipers had to be put in requisition to enable 

 us, in 1836, to discriminate them, by differences not exceed- 

 ing millimetres. The distinction between the fossil and the 

 recent bone is hardly greater than that which might be ex- 

 pected to occur in any two individuals of the living species. 3 

 Here, then, was clear evidence, physical and organic, that 

 the present order of things had set in from a very remote 

 period in India. Every condition was suited to the require- 

 ments of man. The lower animals which approach him 

 nearest in physical structure were already numerous. The 

 wild stocks from which he trains races to bear his yoke in 

 domesticity were established. Why then, in the light of a 

 natural inquiry, might not the human race have made its 

 appearance at that time in the same region ? Cuvier, not- 

 withstanding his strong bias in favour of the modern appear- 

 ance of the human race, admitted, in language which has 

 often been overlooked in later discussions, that man may 

 have lived before the last great revolutions which were the 

 subject of his disquisition: — 'Tout porte done a croire que 

 l'espece humaine n'existait point dans les pays ou. se decou- 

 vrent les os fossiles, a l'epoque des revolutions qui ont enfoui 



1 Vol. vi. p. 359, PI xviii. fig. c. I 3 See vol. i. p. 294.— [Ed.] 

 - See vol. i. p. 304.— [Ed.] 



