1855.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society . 173 



5. From H. H. Smyth, Esq. Foreign Secretary to the Eoyal 

 Society of Loudon, acknowledging receipt of the Journal, Nos. 1 

 @ 4 for 1854 and the Bird Catalogue. 



The Librarian and the Curator of the Zoological Museum sub- 

 mitted their usual monthly reports. 



On the conclusion of the ordinary business, Dr. Falconer, agree- 

 ably to a previous intimation to that effect sanctioned by the Coun- 

 cil, made an oral communication on the probable relations of the 

 great extinct Tortoise of India to certain myths occupying a pro- 

 minent place in the very early Greek and Hindu Cosmogonies. 

 The question had been raised elsewhere before, without having 

 attracted sufficient attention, and Dr. Falconer brought it before 

 the Society in the hope that the interest of the Oriental Section 

 might be awakened in regard to it. 



The purport of Dr. F.'s remarks which he illustrated by diagrams, 

 will be best understood by reprinting the following extracts from 

 the Proceedings of the London Zoological Society, for March and 

 May, 1844. 



A communication was made by Dr. Falconer, conveying the substance 

 of a paper by Capt. Cautley and himself on the osteological characters 

 and palseontological history of the Colossochelys Atlas, a fossil tortoise of 

 enormous size, from the tertiary strata of the Sewalik hills in the north of 

 India — a tertiary chain apparently formed by the detritus of the 

 Himalaya mountains. 



" A great number of huge fragments, derived from all parts of the 

 skeleton, except the neck and tail, were exhibited on the table, illustrative 

 of a diagram by Mr. Scharf of the animal restored to the natural size. 



" The communication opened with a reference to the reptilian forms 

 discovered in the fossil slate, among which colossal representatives have 

 been found of all the known tribes, such as the Iguanodon, Megalosaurns 

 Labyrinthodon, &c, besides numerous forms of which no living analogues 

 exist, such as the Enaliosaurian reptiles and Pterodactyles. No fossil 

 Testudinata remarkable either for size or deviation from existing forms, 

 have hitherto been found in the fossil state. The Colossochelys supplies 

 the blank in the first respect, while it differs so little from the land- 

 tortoises in the general construction of its osseous frame, as hardly to 

 constitute more than a subgenus of Testudo. 



