506 On the Fossil Elk of the Himdlayas. [Sept. 



" There are other calcareous concretions that contain no kind of 

 organic nucleus, but are composed of precisely the same materials as 

 those which are found around the bones, and present many of the 

 irregular shapes of the tuberous roots of vegetables ; some of them 

 also have the elongated conical form of slender stalactites, or clustered 

 icicles — a form not unfrequently produced in beds of loose calcareous 

 sand, by the constant descent of water along the same small cavity 

 or crevice, to which a root or worm hole may have given the first 

 beginning:" p. 383. Mr. Dean's collection has many examples of 

 encrusted twigs and roots. 



Fig. 19, the specimen which so much puzzled the gentlemen who 

 examined the collection while in Mr. D.'s possession is in fact one of 

 the most curious of the whole, nor is yet certain to what animal it should 

 beassigned. Mr. Pearson, on seeing it, pointed out its great resemblance 

 to the cervical vertebra of the young camelopardalis, which died in 

 Calcutta, a few years since, and of which he preserved the skeleton. 

 Lieut. Baker has favored me with a drawing of a similar bone, which 

 he states to belong to a fossil elk in Serjeant Dawe's collection. (See 

 PI. XLIV. and the description in page 507.) There are others of 

 much larger dimensions, he says, in the Dadupur museum, the contents 

 of which will form the subject of a plate in the ensuing number of the 

 Journal. 



The specimen set down as a small petrified fish, which it much 

 resembles in outward form, is, on making a longitudinal section, found 

 to be formed of oval concentric concretions, similar to those of the 

 country almond; possibly they are the convolutions of some shell, but 

 certainly not a fish. 



VI. — On the Fossil Elk of the Himalaya. By Lieut. W. E.Baker, 



Engineers. 

 [In a note to the Editor.] 

 . The fossils represented in the accompanying plate, XLIV. , are stated 

 by the natives who collected them to have been found in the Haripur 

 pass of the Sub -Himalayan range. The original specimens are in the 

 possession of Mr. Dawe of the Canal Department. 



The fragment of antler (fig. 3,) appears undoubtedly to have be- 

 longed to a species of elk, and it is possible, that the two vertebrae 

 (figs. 1 and 2) may have formed a part of the same animal : as they 

 are stated to have been brought from the same locality, and this 

 statement is corroborated by the similarity of colour and general ap- 

 pearance of the fossils. One of the vertebrae (fig. 2) was actually 



