430 The Royal Asiatic Society, 



by invitation, remarked that the specimens afforded additional con- 

 firmation of the fact, first pointed out by Captain Cautley and Dr. 

 Falconer, that in the tertiary formations of India were collocated the 

 remains of several species of reptiles and mammalia, with those of 

 extinct species and genera belonging to the most ancient European 

 deposits of the same geological group (the Eocene) ; as, for example, 

 the teeth and bones of the chiropotamus, and other pachyderms of 

 the Paris Basin, with those of the existing garial of India. Dr. 

 Mantell then offered some observations on the analogy which the 

 specimens from Perim, as well as those from Ava, and from the 

 Sevalic hills, presented in their mineralogical condition, and the me- 

 chanical action to which they had been subjected, with those more 

 ancient fossil bones and teeth that abound in the Wealden deposits of 

 the south-east of England ; particularly with those obtained from the 

 conglomerate and grits of Tilgate Forest. The Indian and the British 

 fossils are alike mineralized by iron, and have an investment of in- 

 durated, ferruginous sand, interspersed with quartz, pebbles, and 

 rolled fragments of other rocks ; and the bones are, for the most part, 

 mutilated, and much water-worn, proving that previously to their 

 mineralization they had been exposed to abrasion from streams and 

 rivers, and were transported from a great distance by currents. Dr. 

 Mantell dwelt on the discrepancy between the Faunas of the two 

 epochs, although that of the Wealden was as decidedly of a tropical 

 character as that of the tertiary strata of India ; but in the latter 

 large mammalia prevailed, while in the far more ancient secondary 

 formation of England mammalia were absent, and the place of 

 gigantic ruminants and pachyderms was occupied by herbivorous 

 reptiles of appalling magnitude. 



