288 Discovery of Fossil Bones in Western India. [May, 



VI. — Recent Discovery of Fossil Bones in Perim Island, in the Cambay 



Gulph. 



[Read at the meeting of the 1st June.] 



The following- notice of the interesting discovery of this new deposit 

 of fossil bones has been obligingly communicated to me in a letter from 

 the Baron Hugel, dated at Bombay the 1 7th April. Although its pub- 

 lication anticipates the arrival of the specimens themselves, it would be 

 an injustice to science and to Dr. Lush to delay for a moment so 

 important an announcement. The acknowledgments of the Society are 

 due both to the discoverer and to the Baron Hugel, for the preference 

 given to our museum for their preservation. I hope the circum- 

 stance may lead to fresh exertions in the valley of the Narbada, where 

 doubtless much still remains to be explored. — J. P. Sec. 



" You will receive shortly a few fossil bones from Perim Island, in the 

 Cambay Gulph. Dr. Lush has the merit to have found them, but with- 

 out exploring them at all. I had no time to go over from Surat, where 

 Dr. Lush showed me them. I requested him to send them to you through 



Mr. Wathen. One is an imperfect bone of a mastodon or elephant 



another the head of a boar unknown, and one belonging, I think, to a 

 * Rongeur;' but what induces me particularly to wish them at Calcutta 

 is, that there is a horn in its matrix, which, connected as these fossils 

 must necessarily be with those of the Narbada, might belong to that 

 species of Bos mentioned in your Journal : it is decidedly not of a 

 Buffalo. I was so anxious to reach Bombay, that I could not possibly 

 go to Perim myself. I did however manage to send a boat over ; and 

 I received yesterday 41 pieces of fossil bones : the greaterpart belonging 

 to the mastodon latidens, of which the teeth, in a perfect state, did not 

 leave any doubt ; some of the bones are of an immense size, one frac- 

 tured piece of the tusk measuring from the centre to the outside of the 

 circle 5± which gives 10| inches diameter, or 34 inches in circumfer- 

 ence : some of them are in the same hard matrix you will see imbedding 

 the horn ; some evidently rolled by the sea. There are some curious 

 teeth among the fragments I possess, and two triangular shaped pieces 

 similar to the horn of a rhinoceros : the teeth are however too large to 

 belong to that animal. I may perhaps send the most curious specimens 

 round to you ; but I am at this moment too much pleased with my dis- 

 covery to part with them. It appears that the island abounds with fossils, 

 and it is a clear proof either that the Narbada must have found only lately 

 its way to the Cambay gulph, or that some other revolution must have 



