OF THE NILE AND GANGES. 



C35 



River, in Western Africa. I had an opportunity of examining 

 them in 1849 ; and in the synopsis which I contributed to 

 Dr. Morton's account of the Liberian Hippopotamus, the 

 species was referred to, under the provisional name of H. 

 annectens, as intermediate between the two living species. 1 

 It may prove to be of H. Pentlandi, the extinct species pre- 

 vailing in Sicily, Malta, and Candia, which was then un- 

 known to me. 



Of H. major, the huge fossil form of the Val d'Arno and 

 Auvergne, abundant remains have been found in deposits, 

 either Pliocene or Quaternary, in Algeria. A fine series of 

 specimens derived from that region is exhibited in the 

 Museum of the Ecole des Mines in Paris. 



3. Asserted Discovery of Human Bones. — The next case of 

 Nilotic fossil remains is of still higher interest, being the 

 asserted discovery of human bones in one of the conglomerate 

 or older beds of the Nile-valley alluvia, at a time when the 

 antiquity of the human race did not engage the attention of 

 men of science as it does at the present day. In Leonhard 

 and Bronn's ' Jahrbuch ' for 1838 a series of letters appeared, 

 in which Russegger gave some account of the results of his 

 explorations then in progress in Nubia and Sudan. In one 

 of these letters, dated Sennaar, March 23, 1838, he de- 

 scribes the structure of the alluvial banks of the Blue Nile 

 from Khartoom up to Sennaar, and thence to Roserres, and 

 adds that, ' In the alluvia of the Blue Nile at Duntai we 

 found human bones. The structure of these bones was 

 perfectly preserved, but the animal matter had disappeared. 

 Their surface was polished and of a blackish-brown colour ; 

 the substance very hard, but not yet petrified ' 2 (Jahrbuch, 

 1838, p. 403). In the second volume of his travels, published 

 in 1843, Russegger enters at greater length into the details of 

 the case, and states that the alluvial formation of the Blue 

 Nile, from Khartoom to Sennaar, consists of freshwater beds 

 thrown down by the river itself, and that, regarded as a whole, 

 they are divisible as follows, from above downwards : — 



1. Ordinary fluviatile mud, the result of modern periodical 

 inundation, analogous in its external characters to the Nile- 

 mud of Egypt, and containing embedded nodules of calcareo- 

 argillaceous concretions (nodular kankar ?) . 



2. Friable, fine and coarse conglomerate, composed of 



1 ' Observations on a new living Spe- 

 cies of Hippopotamus, H. Liberiensis, of 

 Western Africa.' By Dr. Morton, Phil- 

 adelphia, 1849, p. 8. [See antea, p. 404. 

 —Ed.] 



2 ' In den Alluvionen des blauen 

 Flussos bei Dundai fanden wir Men- 



schenknoehen. Das Gefiige derKnoehen 

 war vollstandig erhalten, der Thier- 

 materie aber zerstort. Die Aussenflache 

 war glanzend und schwarzbraun ge- 

 farbt, die Masse sehr hart, aber noch 

 nicht versteinert.' 



