1833.) discovered near Jabalpur. 585 
vation.”” A Fakir it seems had occasion to pull down and rebuild his 
hut, near the banks of the Nerbudda, when in the foundation these 
curious reliques were found and thrown aside. ‘‘ So again,” says Dr. S. 
‘«* some four monthsago, alittle boy tells me of a wonderful skeleton, said 
by the natives to be that of a giant, describing the fingers as a foot 
long: a patel hasa kneepan that serves for a scale to weigh 8 or 4 seers 
of cotton in ;—‘ is not this,’ says the boy, ‘as wonderful as your jawbone ?” 
to this I readily assented, determined at any rate to sift the rumour. 
It was stated to be in Captain GarstTiIn’s district in the Omar Nadi, 
about two kos (9 miles) from Narsinhpur (Garawara). I applied to 
Captain Garstin, who, owing to the rains, was only two or three days 
ago able to send me ina specimen. I suspect it will turn out to bea 
fossil elephant, but I shall be better able to speak on the subject when I 
have visited the spot on my way to Narsinhpur a few days hence.” 
Thus are our eyes at once opening to an unexpected and most inter- 
esting object of geological research. Upon the first inspection of the 
fragments the question naturally arises, to what animal do they belong, 
and to what species ? as it may be remembered that all the fossil mam- 
malia discovered in the tertiary deposits of Europe and America, and 
even those brought away by Mr. Craurorp from Ava, have been pro- 
nounced to belong to extinct species by the most competent authority, 
and generally on the unequivocal testimony of skeletons, nearly com- 
plete, if not perfect. It would be rather hazardous therefore to pro- 
nounce upon the single half jaw-bone* before us, that the Jabalpur 
fossil elephant was an exception to the general rnle; yet, upon com- 
paring the specimen, side by side, with a recent skeleton in the Society’s 
museum, it is impossible to discover any such distinction as should con- 
stitute a difference of species: it is in all respects of the Asiatic type 
of elephant, and can be confidently distinguished from the elephas 
primigenius of Cuvier, so common in Germany and throughout Asiatic 
Russia, which has itself been pronounced ‘‘ more different from the In- 
dian species than the ass is from the hurse, or the chacal from the wolf 
and fox.” —Pidgeon’s Fossil Remains, 59. 
I hope that the accompanying drawing will enable more experienced 
geologists to decide the question of the identity of the specimen with 
the existing species of elephant; for although it may thus lose in an- 
tiquity, it may perhaps gain in value, as an intervening link between 
the inhabitants of our planet in two geological periods now separated 
by so strong a barrier of dissimilar organization. 
* Part of the opposite jaw has been since received, and has been added to the 
drawing. (Pl. XX. Fig. 1.) They are both inverted in the engraving. 
3 °¢ 
