I860.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 41 



to the Western fauna than is that now existing.'' Mr. Blanford also 

 argued very justly, that the case which he instanced in the Nerbudda 

 faunae of the complete substitution of one animal for another of dis- 

 tinct affinities, indicated that a larger lapse of time had intervened 

 since the deposition of the Nerbudda beds than had taken place in 

 Europe since the formation of those pleistocene beds in which the 

 oldest remains of man yet discovered have been found ; u and since 

 which no snch case of substitution was known." The reasoning appears 

 to be perfectly correct, inasmuch as we have no evidence of a great 

 change of climate since that early period. But I venture to think 

 that Mr. Blanford has not stated the whole truth. And I believe he 

 would agree with me in thinking that this intimate connection with 

 the fauna of Europe and Africa to which he alludes, as regards the 

 comparatively recent beds of the Nerbudda, can be traced with per- 

 fect certainty back to the very base of the Sivaliks, and that the 

 mammalian fauna of India (West and North -West) was one and the 

 same with the fauna of Europe and Africa during the miocene period. 

 We have as yet no evidence to decide the question whether the same 

 animals wandered over the same area at the same time ; which, however 

 is a totally different question. And there were also, and of course, 

 geographical differences in the animals then, precisely as there are 

 now. But the discoveries of Gaudry in Greece some six years since 

 shewed at once that the miocene fauna of Pikermi differed not more from 

 the Sivalik fauna of India on the one hand, than it did from the true 

 miocene of Germany and North Europe on the other. Mastodon, 

 Hipparion, Hyaenodon, Musk-deer (Dre)?iotherium), Giraffe, and 

 Satyroid apes, all form units in the evidence which indissolubly 

 connects the upper miocene of Europe with those of the Sivalik Hills. 

 And when examined with a little more detail in comparison, we find 

 that the living species which come nearest to the fossil species found 

 in these rich deposits of Pikermi and elsewhere in Greece, the 

 spotted Hyaena, the two-horned Rhinoceros, the Zebra, the Giraffe, and 

 several antelopes are peculiarly African. Further, Unger found 

 among the vegetable remains which occur in numbers close by in 

 Eubcea (and on the same geological horizon) more than 40 per cent, 

 most nearly allied to forms now living in Southern Africa. 



We have already alluded to the absence in India of any of those 



