170 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [No. 2. 



walik Hills. It is to be mentioned, however, that remains of many of the 

 animals associated with the Colossoehelys in the Sewalik Hills have been 

 discovered along the banks of the Irrawaddi in Ava, and in Perim Island 

 in the Gulf of Cambay, showing that the same extinct fauna was formerly 

 spread over the whole continent of India. 



" This is not the place to enter upon the geological question of the age 

 of the Sewalik strata ; suffice it to say, that the general bearing of the 

 evidence is that they belong to the newer tertiary period. But another 

 question arises : ' Are there any indications as to when this gigantic tor- 

 toise became extinct ? or are there grounds for entertaining the opinion 

 that it may have descended to the human period ?' Any a-priori improba- 

 bility, that an animal so hugely disproportionate to existing species should 

 have lived down to be a contemporary with man, is destroyed by the fact 

 that other species of Chelonians which were coeval with the Colossoehelys 

 in the same fauna, have reached to the present time ; and what is true in. 

 this respect of one species in a tribe, may be equally true of every other 

 placed under the same circumstances. We have as yet no direct evidence 

 to the point, from remains dug out of recent alluvial deposits ; nor is 

 there any historical testimony confirming it ; but there are traditions 

 connected with the cosmogonic speculations of almost all Eastern nations 

 having reference to a tortoise of such gigantic size, as to be associated in 

 their fabulous accounts with the elephant. Was this tortoise a mere 

 creature of the imagination, or was the idea of it drawn from a reality 

 like the Colossoehelys ? 



" Without attempting to follow the tortoise tradition through all its 

 ramifications, we may allude to the interesting fact of its existence even 

 among the natives of America. The Iroquois Indians believed that there 

 were originally, before the creation of the globe, six male beings in the 

 air, but subject to mortality. There was no female among them to perpe- 

 tuate their race ; but learning that there was a being of this sort in hea- 

 ven, one of them undertook the dangerous task of carrying her away. A 

 bird (like the Garuda of Vishnoo or the Eagle of Jupiter) became the 

 vehicle. He seduced the female by flattery and presents : she was turned 

 out of heaven by the supreme deity, but was fortunately received upon 

 the back of a tortoise, when the otter (an important agent in all the tradi- 

 tions of the American Indians) and the fishes disturbed the mud at the 

 bottom of the ocean, and drawing it up round the tortoise formed a small 

 island, which increasing gradually became the earth. We may trace this 

 tradition to an Eastern source, from the circumstance that the female is 

 said to have had two sons, one of whom slew the other ; after which she 

 had several children, from whom sprung the human race. 



