CHAPTER XL 
SOME INDIAN MONSTERS. 
“ What a glorious privilege it would be, could we live back — were it but 
for an instant — into those ancient times when these extinct animals peopled 
the earth ! to see them all congregated together in one grand natural 
menagerie — these mastodons and elephants, so numerous in species, toiling 
their ponderous forms and trumpeting their march in countless herds through 
the swamps and reedy forests ! ” — Hugh Falconer, 
It is a far cry back, against the sun’s path, from Wyoming and 
the flanks of the Rocky Mountains to the sacred Himalayas — the 
‘‘ abode of snow ” — of Northern India. But if the reader will follow 
us to that country, we will endeavour to describe two or three out 
of many strange and now lost forms of life brought to light from 
the famous Sivalik Hills, on the southern border of the Himalayas 
for the knowledge of which Science is greatly indebted to a 
very distinguished palaeontologist, the late Mr. Hugh Falconer. 
Together with his friend Captain Cautley (afterwards Sir Proby 
Cautley), he explored this region, and their joint arduous labours 
show that it was at one time inhabited by a very large and varied 
group of quadrupeds, together with many birds, reptiles, fishes, 
mollusca, and crustaceans. 
In this region there lived, throughout a considerable part of the 
Tertiary period, elephants, of various species, whose skulls and 
bones were found in great numbers ; mastodons (a closely allied 
form) ; and several species of hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and 
horse : among ruminants, species of the camel, the ox, the 
