388 ruocEEDiKGS of the geological sociEir. [March 22, 



parison between the fossil specimen and the corresponding tooth of 

 three skulls of the Orang-Utan, contained in the Mnsenm of the 

 Asiatic Society in Calcutta, and found that their agreement was so 

 close, that I conjectured that the extinct Sawalik form had been a 

 large Ape, allied to Pithecus Satyrus. A quadrumanous astragalus 

 derived from the same strata, approached in form and proportions 

 so near to that of the existing Hoonuman Monkey, Semnopitliecus 

 entellus, that the help of the callipers had to be put in requisition 

 to enable us in 1836 to discriminate them, by differences not ex- 

 ceeding millimetres. The distinction between the fossil and the 

 recent bone is hardly greater than that which might be expected 

 to occur in any two individuals of the living species. 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 con- 

 dition was suited to the requirements of man : the lower animals 

 which approach him nearest in phj-sical structure were already nu- 

 merous ; 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, notwithstanding his 

 strong bias in favour of the modern appearance of the human race, 

 admitted, in language which has often been overlooked in later dis- 

 cussions, that man may have lived before the last great revolutions 

 which were the subject of his disquisition. "Tout porte done 

 a croire que I'espece humaine n'existait point dans les pays ou se 

 decouvrent les os fossiles, a I'epoque des revolutions qui ont 

 enfoui ces os : car il n'y aurait eu aucune raison pour qu'elle echap- 

 pat toute entiere a des catastrophes aussi generates, et pour 

 que ses restes ne se rctrouvassent pas aujourd'hiii comnie ccux des 

 autres animaux ; mais je n'en veux pas conclure que I'homme 

 n'existait du tout avant cette epoque. II pouvait habiter quelques 

 contrees pen etendues, d'ou il a repeuple la terre apres ces evenemens 

 terribles," &c. The valley of the Ganges seemed to present the ex- 

 ceptional conditions here demanded ; it was exempt from the pro- 

 tracted submergence under the ocean, the effects of which in Eu- 

 rope suggested the idea of cataclysmic revolutions. I dwell upon 

 the subject now, in the hope that, when the palaeontological ex- 

 ploration of the Sewalik Hills and of the Nerbudda Yalley 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. Eor it is not under 

 the hard conditions of the glacial period in Europe that the earliest 

 rehcs of the human race upon the globe are to be sought. Like the 

 Esquimaux, the Tchukche, and Samoyeds on the shores of the Icy 

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

 emigrant placed under circumstances of rigorous and uncertain ex- 

 istence, 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 Ganges, the Irrawaddi, and 



