AND HIS COTEUPORARIES. 579 



ces os ; ear il n'y aurait eu aucune raison pour qu'elle echap- 

 pat toute entiere a des catastrophes aussi generales, et pour 

 que ses restes ne se retrouvassent pas aujourd'hui comme 

 ceux des autres auiuiaux ; mais je n'en veux pas conclure 

 que l'homme n'existait du tout avant cette epoque. II pouvait 

 habiter quelques contrees peu etendues, d'ou il a repeuple 

 la terre apres ces evenements terribles,' &c. The Valley of the 

 Ganges seemed to present the exceptional conditions here 

 demanded ; it was exempt from the protracted submergence 

 under the ocean, the effects of which on Europe suggested 

 the idea of cataclysmic revolutions. I dwell upon the sub- 

 ject now in the hope that, when the palseontological explora- 

 tion of the Sewalik hills and Nerbudda Valley, or of other 

 equivalent formations, is resumed, these remarks may attract 

 attention in India, and that a keen look-out may be kept up 

 for remains of the large fossil Ape above alluded to, and for 

 traces of man, in some form of equally remote antiquity. 

 For it is not under the hard conditions of the GHacial period 

 in Europe, that the earliest relics of the human race upon 

 the globe are to be sought. Like the Esquimaux, the 

 Tchuktshes, and the Samoyedes on the shores of the Icy Sea 

 at the present day, man must have been then and there an 

 emigrant, placed under circumstances of vigorous and uncer- 

 tain existence, unfavourable to the struggle of life and to 

 the maintenance and spread of the species. It is rather in 

 the great alluvial valleys of tropical or sub-tropical rivers 

 like the Granges, the Irrawaddi, and the Nile, where we may 

 expect to detect the vestiges of his earliest abode. It is there 

 where the necessaries of life are produced by nature in the 

 greatest variety and profusion, and obtained with the smallest 

 effort ; there, where climate exacts the least protection against 

 the vicissitudes of the weather ; and there, where the lower 

 animals which approach nearest to man now exist, and where 

 their fossil remains turn up in the greatest variety and 

 abundance. The earliest date to which man has as yet been 

 traced back in Europe is probably but as yesterday, in com- 

 parison with the epoch at which he made his appearance in 

 more favoured regions. 



III. 



The next case to which I shall refer occurs in the pre- 

 fatory remarks of a published catalogue ' of Indian fossil 



1 Descriptive Catalogue of the Fossil 

 Remains of Vertebrata from the Se- 

 walik hills, &c., in the Museum of the 



Asiatic Society of Bengal, by H. Fal- 

 coner, M.D., F.R.S., assisted by H. 

 AValker, Esq. 8vo. Calcutta, 1859, p. 7. 



pp 2 



