1880.] 



Hisforij of til c Fossil Yertehrdta of India. 



15 



Gapitodus was previously only known from the Miocene of Vienna and 

 Silesia, and is allied to the living genus Sargus. 



Mio- Pliocene. — From the Siwalik rocks there were, I believe, a consi- 

 derable number of fish-remains procured by Falconer and Cautley, but these 

 vpere never described : the collection of fossil fish-remains from the Siwaliks 

 in the Indian Museum is but small. Among the Teleostei, we have the 

 siluroids represented by a very perfect skull, originally described in the 

 Society's Journal* by Dr. Cantor as the skull of a huge frog : subsequent- 

 ly this skull was referred by M'Clellandf to the siluroid fishes. The lat- 

 ter writer describes the skull as being remarkable for its great breadth, and 

 as carrying teeth on the jaws, but not on the palate: M'Clelland also 

 thouglit that the skull might belong to a species of Pimelodm : this deter- 

 mination is, I think, certainly erroneous, because the latter genus, with one 

 African exception, is entirely West Indian, and it is vmlikely that a fresh-water 

 genus of fishes should be found in the Pliocene of India, and now only in Africa 

 and the West Indies. Many of the living Indian siluroids {Glarius, Hetero- 

 hranclius, Silurus, Sihiriohtliys') have palatal teeth, and the fossil cannot, 

 therefore, belong to any of those genera. The Indian genus Gliaca, on the 

 other hand, is characterized, according to Dr. Giinther,J by its exceedingly 

 broad and depressed head, and absence of palatal teeth, and I think, therefore, 

 it is not improbable that the fossil may belong to that genus, though, in the 

 absence of specimens for comparison, I cannot be sure. Detached vertebrae, 

 from the Siwaliks, also indicate the existence of teleostean and, probably, 

 fresh water fishes, but of what group is uncertain. Of the Elasmobranchii, 

 a few teeth indicate the former existence of a Siwalik Lamna, which proba- 

 bly inhabited tiie larger rivers : a single tooth from the mammaliferous beds 

 of the Irawadi belongs to a speci as of Carcliarias, and large squaline vertebrse 

 have been obtained from Perim Island. From the Siwaliks of Sind and 

 the Punjab, we have some crushing palatal teeth of an undescribed fish, 

 which I have lately sent home for determination. 



Scales of teleostean fishes have been obtained by Col. Godwin-Austen 

 from the Tertiaries or post-Tertiaries of Kashmir ; they are not, however, 

 determined. 



The above notes indicate the extreme poverty of the fossil fish-fauna 

 of India — a poverty, I think, in great part due to the want of suflicient 

 search. 



♦ Vol. VI, p. 583. 



t Calc. Jour. Nat. Hist. Vol. IV, p. 83. 

 X Brit. Mus. Cat. of Fishes, Vol. V, p. 29. 



