XVlll 



series. Some years afterwards the Cinchona was introduced from South 

 America, and it is now thriving in India. In 1854, assisted by his friend 

 the late Mr. Henry Walker, he undertook a * Descriptive Catalogue of the 

 Fossil Collections in the Museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,' which 

 was published as a distinct work in 1859. In the spring of 1855 he retired 

 from the Indian service. 



On his return to England he resumed his palseontological researches, and 

 in 1857 he communicated to the Geological Society two memoirs On the 

 Species of Mastodon and Elephant occurring in the Fossil state in England." 

 Besides attempting to discriminate with precision the three British fossil 

 elephants, till then confounded under the name of Elephas primigenius, Dr. 

 Falconer produced for the first time a Synoptical Table, showing the serial 

 affinities of all the species of Prohoscidia, fossil and living, then known, of 

 the former of which a large number had been either discovered or deter- 

 mined by himself. In the same year he published an account of the remark- 

 able Purbeck mammahan genus ^ Plagiaulax," discovered by Mr. Beckles 

 near Swanage. In 1860 he communicated a memoir to the Geological Society 

 *'0n the Ossiferous Caves of Gower," explored or discovered by his friend 

 Lieut. -Col. Wood. The existence of Elephas antiquus and Wiinoceros hemi- 

 toecJius as members of the cave-fauna was then for the first time established, 

 and the age of that fauna precisely defined as posterior to the boulder-clay, 

 or period of the glacial submergence of England. In 1862 Dr. Falconer 

 communicated to the British Association at Cambridge an account of Ele- 

 phas melitensis, the pigmy fossil elephant of Malta, discovered, with other 

 extinct mammals, by his friend Captain Spratt, C.B., in the ossiferous cave 

 of Zebbug. This unexpected form presented the Proboscidia in a new 

 light to naturalists. Further researches on the general questions concern- 

 ing the same family appeared in a memoir published in the ' Natural His- 

 tory Review' in 1863. Among many notes and papers which never ap- 

 peared during his life-time may be mentioned a most important memxoir 



On the European Pliocene and Post-pliocene species of 'Rhinoceros^'' 

 which, it is hoped, will shortly be published. In this memoir it is shown 

 that there are four distinct pliocene and post-pliocene species of Rhinoceros, 

 three of which have long been confounded by Cuvier and other palseonto- 

 logists under the name of R. leptorhinus. One of these, R. leptorhinus 

 (R. megarhinus of Christol.) has no bony nasal septum ; two, R. Etruscus 

 (Falc.) and R. hemitcechus (Falc), or R. leptorhinus (Owen), have a partial 

 bony nasal septum ; while the fourth, R. antiqidtatis (Blumb.) or R. 

 tichorhinus (Cuv. & Fisch.), has a complete bony nasal septum. 



While exploring the Himalayahs in his early days. Falconer's attention 

 had been closely directed to the physical features which disthiguished them 

 from mountain-ranges in temperate regions, and more especially to the 

 general absence from their southern valleys of the great lakes so common 

 in corresponding situations in the Alps. ¥/hen the hypothesis of the ex- 

 cavation of lake-basins by glacial action was brought forward, he took a 



