690 Asiatic Society. [A 



UGUST, 



Society. The Agra School Book Society are most anxious to get these works printed, 

 and Lord Auckland I understand received the proposal favourably. By all parties 

 agreeing to take a certain number of copies, the share of the expense on each will be 

 too trifling to deserve consideration. 



Believe me, My dear Sir, 



To be yours very faithfully, 



L. WILKINSON, 

 Resolved— That the subject be referred to the Committee of Papers. 

 Read an application from Neemchaund Sheeromonee, demanding remuneration 

 for correcting the proofs of the Mahabharata. 



Resolved— That the application be referred to the Committee of Papers. 



Physical. 



Read a letter from Messrs. Fraser, Macdonald and Co. forwarding a claim of 

 Mr. W. Scott of Singapore, for Co's. Rs. 240-3-9 for expenses incurred by him in 

 keeping the register of the tides of that place. 



Resolved — That the Society recognize and discharge this claim in question. 



Read the following letter from Mr, Sconce regarding some Geological specimens 

 forwarded to the Society. 



My dear Sutherland, 



I am despatching to you some things that look like Geological specimens, 

 and from the circumstances under which they were found, what I infer to be relics of 

 some of the ancient epochs which mark a Geologist's History of the world. The 

 largest and most important — if it be real — of the specimens, seems to be the remains 

 of an animal of the turtle kind ; though in a much larger scale than the modern 

 turtles or tortoises. The size however will not disprove identity, if there be other 

 marks sufficient to guide the judgment of one acquainted with Natural History. I 

 knowing nothing of such matters, am merely led by the appearances which the 

 specimen exhibits of animal conformation— the shape and relative position of the parts, 

 and the peculiar marks of some of the parts are such, as not I think, to be inanimate 

 concretions accidentally formed in a sand hill. The specimen was broken before I 

 discovered it — and I sent my gardener with insufficient instructions to dig out the re- 

 mainder. He brought me consequently a heap of fragments, and what I send you are 

 such parts as I could put together. I have packed the pieces in such a manner that 

 you will be able, I dare say to trace the form they assume. When put together, 

 they form two distinct portions, and of these I shall enclose pencil sketches that may 

 help you to "pick up the pieces." I send also several unconnected bits of the same 

 specimen ; in one of these you will detect distinct traces of a claw— and in another 

 what looks like a paw in relief. In this latter you will observe corroborative evidence 

 of animal existence in the evident delineation of five fingers or toes, and also marks 

 of spurs or nails. I send also in another box an entire fragment— that is, a portion 

 just as it lay in the hill. My idea of the specimen is that it exhibits the external 

 form of the animal, and the fossilization as we now see it, was effected during, or in 

 consequence of, animal decomposition. I cannot detect how far the hardened mass 

 may be a type of the— so to call it— turtle shell. The last specimen I have men- 

 tioned will shew you that the fossil was, as it were, a case or mould— enclosing fine 

 white sand. Externally it was included in a stratified deep brown sand hill, to the 

 depth of forty or fifty feet below the surface. 





