i877-] 
Scientific Notes. 
427 
science. In part 2 of vol. ix. of these Records Mr. Lydekker gives an interesting 
description of a cranium of Stegodon Ganesa, with notes on the sub-genus and 
on allied forms. From the number of species and genera found in the 
Siwaliks and other Indian strata he considers that India was the original home 
of the Proboscidians. Elephas, Mastodon , Deinotherium , and Tapirus are all 
found fossil in that country. The migration probably took plase from thence, 
where all the sub-genera had arisen long before the Siwalik times. “ Loxodon 
planifrons or an unknown allied species might have travelled westwards and 
given rise to Loxodon meridionalis of the English ‘ Forest Beds,’ and subse- 
quently to the living Loxodon africanus. Euclephas may first have given rise 
to the Siwalik species, from which again sprang the Narbada species and the 
living Euclephas indicus , and, on the other hand, to another branch which 
travelled over Asiatic Russia and thence to Europe, producing the Mammoth 
(E. primigenius) and the other European species.” “ Mastodon , as having 
the widest distribution — Europe, Asia, and America — as well as from being 
the most generalised type of the family, may well be considered as the most 
ancient form of the group ; its earliest occurrence in India is in the supra- 
nummulitic beds of Sind and Kach, and its latest existence was probably in 
the marshes of the Ohio, where it not unlikely lived down to the human 
period. It is the only American representative of the family, and its migration 
may well have taken place from India westward. Mastodon was the first of 
the elephants to die out in India,. it being unknown after the Siwalik period.” 
Part 3 includes a paper on “ The Age of some Fossil Floras of India,” by 
Ottocar Feistmantel ; a note on “ The Geological Age of Certain Groups 
Comprised in the Gondwana series of India, and on the evidence they afford of 
distindt Zoological and Botanical Terrestrial Regions in Ancient Epochs,” by 
W. T. Blanford, F.R.S. ; a memoir on “ The Fossiliferous Strata at Materi 
and Kota,” by T. W. H. Hughes, F.G.S. ; and notes on the “ Fossil Mam- 
malian Faunae of India and Burma,” by R. Lydekker, B.A. Mr. Blanford 
concludes “ that the faunas and floras of distant lands varied in palaeozoic 
and mesozoic times, as they do at the present day far more than the fauna of 
the seas; in short, that there were distindt zoological and botanical provinces, 
and that evidence founded upon fossil plants of the age of rocks in distant 
regions must be received with great caution, and that such evidence is cer- 
tainly in some cases opposed to that furnished by the marine fauna.” Mr. 
Lydekker, in summing up the fossil mammalia of India, finds that all the 
species found in the Indian tertiaries below the Nerbudda beds are extindt. 
The numerical relations of the genera are as follows: — 
Extindt 
Peculiar to Indian tertiaries . . 
Common to Indian and European tertiaries . . 
Common to fossil and living Indian faunae 
Common to Indian tertiaries and modern Africa 
Common to Indian tertiaries and modern Europe 
25 
14 
26 
*7 
12 
8 
“ The greatest number of genera common to any two periods occur in the 
tertiaries of Europe and India; next to them the greatest common number is 
found in the living and fossil Indian faunae; thirdly, a small number of genera 
is common to the extindt fauna of India and the living fauna of Africa ; a few 
genera are common to the extindt Indian fauna and the modern European 
fauna; while a larger number of genera are common to the living faunae of 
India and Africa.” These results, the author considers, “ appear clearly to 
point to some former connedtion by land between the continents of India, 
Africa, and Europe.” A land connedtion between the two former regions 
stretching across the present Indian Ocean has been named Indo-oceania in 
a recent paper by Mr. H. F. Blanford (“ Quarterly Journal of the Geological 
Society of London,” November, 1875), and is known among other investigators 
as Lemuria. In those days it must be remembered that the peninsula of 
India was not connedted with Central Asia, but was separated from it by a 
deep Eo-Miocene sea. The connedtion between India and Europe was of 
course by way of Africa. 
