386 PROCEEDINGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [March 22, 



tending with an elephant, as of any known Indian tortoise to do 

 the same in the case of the fable of Garucla. The fancy would 

 scont the image as incongruous, and the weight even of mythology 

 would not ho strong enough to enforce it on the faith of the most 

 superstitious epoch of the human race. 



" But the indications of mythological tradition are in every case 

 vague and uncertain, and in the present instance we would not lay 

 undue weight on the tendencies of such as concern the Tortoise. 

 We have 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, tha,t the Colossochelys Atlas 

 may have lived down to an early epoch of the human period and be- 

 come extinct since : — 1st, from the fact that other Chelonian species 

 and Crocodiles, eotemporaries of the Colossochelys in the Sewalik 

 fauna, have survived ; 2nd, from the indications of mythology in re- 

 gard to a gigantic species of tortoise in India." — Proceed. Zool. JSoc. 

 Loncl. 1844, part xii. p. 85. 



3. Recent Aspect of the question. Conclusion. — More than twenty- 

 five years have elapsed since the speculation contained in the 

 passages above cited was briefly shadowed out in a communica- 

 tion addressed to the Geological Society; subsequent reflection 

 and research have in nowise tended to invalidate it. In referring 

 to it now, it is not meant to be urged that any weight can be rested 

 on it, except as suggestive of further research in the palseon- 

 tological direction to which it points. But it will perhaps be ad- 

 mitted, that the observers from whom it emanated were then occu- 

 pied with the question of the remote antiquity of man in India. 

 It is true that the expressed view is that the Colossochelis may have 

 lived down to an early epoch of the human period ; and not that 

 man had lived back to be a eotemporary 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 pre- 

 judices on the subject, which were then dominant among educated • 

 men. And so firmly Avas, not merely the possibihty, but the 

 probability of the case impressed upon our miaads, that Caj)tain 

 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 unstratified superficial gravels, sands, 

 and clays, which for a long time were confidently adduced as evi- 

 dence that a great diluvial wave had suddenly passed over Europe 

 and other continents, overwhelming terrestrial life, and leaving the 

 marks of its com'se and violent action in these enormous deposits of 

 transported debris. Every section aloug the Gangetic plain in- 



