144 
APPENDIX. 
vations and descriptions that make up the present memoir 
are founded. 
Before I proceed to the details of this interesting subject, 
it may not be amiss to refer to the state of our knowledge, 
or rather ignorance, of the geology of these regions, ante¬ 
cedently to the discoveries of Mr. Crawfurd; an ignorance 
which our frequent and extensive intercourse with India 
has but recently and in a very slight degree tended to dis¬ 
pel ; since, with the exception of two Memoirs in the 
Geological Transactions, *—the one a paper by Mr. Cole- 
brooke on the North-east border of Bengal, the other a des¬ 
cription of a collection of specimens made by Mr. Fraser, 
on a journey from Delhi to Bombay ; and of two brief no¬ 
tices in the same volume,—no description of the secondary, 
tertiary, or diluvial formations of central and southern Asia, 
as compared with the similar formations of Europe, has been 
given to the public. 
In the year 1823, in the following passage of my Re- 
liquid Dilumand , + I quoted the opinion of Mr. Weaver on 
the importance of instituting a comparison between the 
organic remains which might be discovered in the dilu¬ 
vium of tropical countries, and the similar remains found 
in the diluvium of the temperate and frigid zones of the 
northern hemisphere:—- 
“ Another interesting branch of enquiry is, whether any 
fossil remains of elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus and 
hyaena, exist in the diluvium of tropical climates; and if 
they do, whether they agree with the recent species of these 
genera, or with those extinct species whose remains are dis¬ 
persed so largely over the temperate and frigid zones of the 
northern hemisphere.” 
It could scarcely have been anticipated, that within so 
* Vol. I. Part 1. New Series. 
f P. 170. 
