FALCONER ON THE PERIM ISLAND FOSSILS. 367 



" elevated during the same comparatively recent epoch as the 

 " Sichel Hills, between the Godavery and Taptee, the Gawulgurh 

 " range, and the Satpoora mountains, south of the Nerbudda." He 

 adds also the following startling generalization: " Over all these tracts 

 " then I am justified in believing that at one time extensive lakes 

 " and marshy plains existed, full of the ordinary forms of lacustrine 

 " life. The precipitous and thirsty mountain ranges which inter- 

 " sect India, and which now rise bare and burnt up in inaccessible 

 " cliffs, which for months of every year hardly afford water for 

 " the birds of the air, must then have exhibited vast plains, full of 

 " fresh-water lakes and marshes, on the muddy shores of which 

 " multitudes of gavials, crocodiles, and tortoises must have preyed ; 

 fi and amidst the rank luxuriance of the bordering vegetation the 

 " Mastodons, Hippopotami, Bisons, and Sivatheria, must have 

 " ranged, whose bones are now found so abundantly scattered over 

 India." * Unfortunately, this excellent observer's researches on 

 the Gulf of Cambay have never been published ; but in a note 

 appended to the paper quoted above, he mentions the occurrence 

 of trap pebbles in the tertiary sandstones of Perim Island and 

 Kattiwar, (see ante, p. 359.) and in the cornelian conglomerates of 

 Rajpeepla and Broach, which are said to be remarkably altered 

 by the intrusion of igneous rocks of a late date. 



Supplementary Observations. Since the preceding remarks were 

 in type, I have had occasion to examine some other Perim Island 

 fossils presented to the British Museum by Miss Pepper : one of 

 which has furnished additional and most unequivocal evidence of a 

 huge Indian species of Dinotherium. The specimen is a superb frag- 

 ment of the left half of the lower jaw, containing nearly the whole 

 of the adult series of five molars in situ. The contour of the body 

 of the jaw is shown in the most perfect state of preservation, the 

 fossil having fortunately been mineralised by means of a very hard 

 siliceo-ferruginous infiltration. But it has evidently been long 

 rolled about on the sea-beach as a boulder, so that the crowns 

 of the whole series of molars have been hammered off nearly level 

 with the alveolar margin of the jaw ; the surface of the fossil is jet 

 black, and almost all of the matrix has been cleared away, 

 probably by the long-continued action of the sea, which has given 

 it a semi-vitreous polish. That it had latterly been in the sea is 

 distinctly proved by adherent patches of recent marine shells 

 identical with those found on others of the Perim fossils : and the 

 testaceous remains being white, pearly, and fresh-looking, are seen 

 in marked relief upon the black surface of the fossil. The symphisis 

 of the jaw is broken off about 2^ inches in front of the anterior 

 premolar, and the bone is truncated behind exactly opposite the 

 point where the coronoid margin of the ramus begins to rise up, the 



* Malcolmson, Journal Bombay Geograph. Society, vol. for 1841 — 1844, 

 p. 371. 



