428 The Royal Asiatic Society, 



proved, and it may happen in a few years that the inconsiderate 

 financial speculation of Naples may deprive her of that lucrative 

 commerce. In like manner Russia, by her prohibitory system, has 

 lost much of her trade in tallow and potash. One country purchases 

 only from absolute necessity from another, which excludes her own 

 productions from her markets. Instead of the tallow and linseed oil 

 of Russia, Great Britain now uses palm oil and cocoanut oil of other 

 countries. Precisely analogous is the combination of workmen 

 against their employers, which has led to the construction of many 

 admirable machines for superseding manual labour. In commerce 

 and industry every imprudence carries with it its own punishment ; 

 every oppression immediately and sensibly recoils upon the head of 

 those from whom it emanates." — Ibid. 



Asiatic Society. — June 21. — Sir G. T. Staunton, Bart., M.P., in 

 the chair. — R. Alcock, Esq., was elected a Corresponding Member. 



Mr. A. Bettington, of the Bombay Civil Service, read a paper on 

 certain fossils procured by himself on the Island of Perim, in the 

 Gulf of Cambay ; more particularly on a gigantic ruminant, having 

 some affinities to the Sivatherium and the Giraffe. After adverting 

 to former notices of fossils obtained on this island, the writer describ- 

 ed its situation in the midst of the gulf stream of Cambay, which 

 separates it from the main land, and deposits large quantities of 

 alluvium brought down by the rivers emptying themselves into it. 

 These rivers, in the present day, in the freshes, transport into the 

 Gulf large trees, and the bodies of oxen, deer, bears, and other ani- 

 mals ; and in the great floods of past ages are considered to have 

 brought down and deposited, as now discovered, the remains of rumi- 

 nants and pachydermata, some extinct and unheard of, others having, 

 in the present day, their living congeners in the Indian rivers. The 

 bed from which the writer obtained the fossil specimens exhibited is 

 below the usual water mark, and inaccessible except at the ebb of 

 spring tides. A portion only of those obtained were brought to Eng- 

 land, the remainder were left in India. The most remarkable of those 

 in this country was a large skull, which is now, by competent judges, 

 pronounced to be the first specimen of a new genus. The mass of 

 conglomerate which contained it weighed about 170 lb., and the 



