1833.] and on the Fossil Bones collected on the Jamna. 631 



kankar shoal. But whether they become fossils in the clay, or whether, 

 after becoming so in other spots, they were swept on, till lodged in the 

 clefts of the clay, still remains a point to be ascertained. 



There is a probability in the former supposition, from the fossils 

 found in clay being coloured throughout with its yellow tinge, whilst 

 those dug up from gravel or kankar are of the greyish hue of these 

 latter substances. If then the fossils are of the dates of the masses in 

 which they were discovered, their age must be considerable, for the 

 clay spoken of lies at great depth in the plain of the Doab, and must 

 be a very early deposit. 



In regard to fossils — will substances, after having completed their 

 change to that state in some other spot, acquire throughout their in- 

 ternal structure the color of clays, in the clefts of which, after travel- 

 ling from a distance, they may have found a fresh resting place ? If 

 they will, the difference of color in the fossils leads to no evident con- 

 clusion on the preceding surmises. One curious particular seems 

 established after repeated inquiries. The fossils marked 5 were taken 

 out of clefts in clay which lay below a thick stratum of rock kankar. 

 Still it is far from certain that the rock kankar was so entire, so free 

 from fissures, as to permit of no other explanation than that of the 

 fossils having been deposited or changed in the clay, before the forma- 

 tion of the kankar which rested in it. That clay is itself of great age, 

 it is at the bottom of the river, 40 feet from the extreme height of the 

 rise of the river in the rains, and from 100 to 150 below the plain of 

 the Doab and Bundelkhand." 



To these guarded remarks of Captain E. Smith, every attention is 

 due, and he deserves our best thanks for so impartially laying the 

 circumstances of the Jamna fossils before us. It would seem to be 

 pretty well established from his local observations, that many if 

 not all of the fossils were first deposited in the clay stratum from 

 100 to 150 feet below the plain of the Doab, and under the general 

 line of the kankar formation ; that upon the excavation of the present 

 bed of the Jamna, many have been washed out of their original seats 

 and removed to clefts in the ledges of rock in the bed of the river, and 

 have been there mixed up with a fresher muddy deposit, and in some 

 cases impregnated with a tint therefrom. That they belong to the 

 former period, and that the kankar attached to them is also much more 

 ancient than the present sands of the river, is rendered sufficiently evi- 

 dent in some of the specimens by the large angular quartz and felspar 

 gravel, cemented on to many of the bones. Some angular pebbles of 



