40 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society* [Jan. 



Thus it happens, as first shadowed out by Falconer, that we find 

 living at the present day the actual and unchanged descendants of 

 several of those animals, the remains of which Falconer and Cautley 

 found buried under some thousands of feet of the Sivalik deposits. 

 And the evidence of the continuity of this descent is afforded by 

 the deposits newer than the Sivaliks. The common Gharial left its 

 bones on the mudbanks of the Sivalik period, just as it now basks on 

 the muddy banks of our existing rivers. The little Emys (Pang- 

 shiira) tectum lived then as now. Elephants then, as now, roamed 

 though the Sivalik forests. True horses (Eqiius) existed ; the Oamel 

 and Giraffe, cotemporaries of man at the present time, may have been 

 his cotemporaries then also, while true oxen and buffaloes abounded 

 also. The monkeys of that time can scarcely be distinguished from 

 the Honumans which still chatter in our forests. We have therefore 

 abundant evidence that, in India, the existing order of things has 

 dated from a very remote period, and that all the conditions of those 

 early times were suited to the requirements of man. Many of the 

 animals have since then lived down to the period of man, and some 

 exist now. Why then is not the reverse, or reciprocal, way of putting 

 the statement equally admissible, that man had lived back to this 

 early period ? 



In this peculiar relationship of continuity between the newer de- 

 posits of the Godavery and Nerbudda, and the older beds of the 

 Sivaliks, consists one of the marked points of interest attaching to the 

 discovery of evidence of man in any one part of the series. There is 

 no sudden or marked break traceable in the Mammalian fauna which 

 inhabited those countries at the successive periods, why should there 

 be any break in the period through which man was a cotemporary of 

 these animals ? 



In some very interesting and very important remarks made by my 

 valued colleague, Mr. Wm. Blanford, last year, when the history of 

 the stone implements found in various parts of India was before the 

 Society, he pointed out very briefly how, ■ even up to the present day, 

 the fauna of India presents a remarkable mixture of African and 

 Malay forms ; and how the fauna of the Nerbudda gravels, so far as 

 known, appeared " to have been cither purely Western, (African and 

 European) in its affinities or to have been much more nearly allied 



