Records of the Geological Survey of India. 
[VOL. I. 
66 
T1 ie first notice of the discovery of this flake was given at the meeting of the Asiatic 
Society of Bengal on the 6th December 1865. The specimen had not then reached me, blit 
judging from the description I had no doubt about its character, and the matter was brought 
forward as of “the highest interest.” I then said : “Many of the members of the Society 
are perhaps not aware that, spreading over a large area, in the country drained by the upper 
waters of the Godavery and its affluents, there is a widely-spread deposit of clays and gravels 
containing remains of large mammalia, which are probably of the same kind as those which 
occur in the similar gravels and clays of the Nerbudda valley, and of which the Society pos¬ 
sesses many specimens. From these gravels and in the valley of the Godavery near Pyton, an 
agate (lake, bearing evident marks of having been artificially made, has been dug out recently 
by Mr. Wynne of the Geological Survey. This is a fact of great importance, and we must 
only hope that further research will tend to clear away any difficulties that now remain, and 
add to the history of these interesting relics of the early in habitants of these countries,” 
(ji. 207). This important discovery of Mr. Wynne's was alluded to by Mr. H. F. Blan¬ 
ked in a letter quoted in the Geological Magazine (London) for February 1806 (where 
Mr. Wynne’s name is erroneously printed Bynue). p. 93. And Mr. Wynne himself gave a 
more detailed account of the mode of its occurrence in the same Magazine (June 1866, 
p. 283). Mr. W. T. Blanford more recently (October 1866 and September 1867) has again 
alluded to this discovery of Mr. Wynne's as bearing on the early appearance of man 
in India. 
This question of the antiquity of man in this country long since excited much interest. 
Almost the earliest speculations in which my lamented friend Hugh Falconer indulged when 
the Sewallk fauna was beginning to unfold its richness to him were on this point, and ho, to 
the last, believed that there was good reason to suppose that several of the animals whose 
remains were found imbedded in the so called miocene deposits of the Sewalikx had been 
cotemporarics of man. Much more therefore would he have been prepared to admit the 
validity of proof tending to establish his existence at a more recent period. 
Unfortunately as yet we have no specific determination of the animal remains from the 
Godavery valley excepting in one ease (Elephant Namudinus). Bones of oxen, Ac., have been 
found, but have not been identified specifically. Still looking to the marked general resem¬ 
blance both in mineral character and in mode of occurrence and distribution, and to the fact 
of the comparative proximity of the Godavery to the Nerbudda, there can, I think, be little 
doubt that these similar deposits in the two valleys are approximately of the same geological 
ago. From the Nerbudda valley a large number of species and of genera have been deter¬ 
mined, and to these deposits Falconer assigned the general age of ‘ pleiocene in these cautious 
words, alluding at the time specially to the researches of the Geological Survey of India : “ In 
designating the formation as pliocene which I have during many years, I have been guided 
by the indication!) of the mammalian fauna, as intermediate between the miocene of the 
Ivrawaddi, Perim Island and the Sewalik Hills, and that of the existing period” (Quarterly 
Journal, Geological Society, London, XXI, p. 383). In the same masterly paper, Dr. Falconer 
pointed out that no trustworthy cases of the Occurrence of very ancient human bones, or 
industrial objects, have yet been established from the section of the Jumna and Ganges, but 
that they may be looked for on a more careful and extended search, stating also that the 
ancient fossil Mammalia of the Gangctie valley belong to the pliocene fauna of the Nerbudda, 
“ to which also it would appear certain that, the deposit- of the Godavery" (from which the 
(lake now described was obtained) “ also belong." 
The vastly interesting results which these researches involve have for year's past been 
most closely and keenly discussed in Europe and America. The antiquity of man is there 
one of the most eagerly investigated questions of modern science, while in this country, 
where so many reasons combine to indicate a greater probability of success, hut little has been 
done. It will be useful to quote here the eloquent words of Dr. H. Falconer on this subject. 
After referring to the curious support which the discovery of the huge ColossocJudys served to 
give to mythologi ' t edition, and the inference that this animal may have lived down to an 
early epoch of the human period, he proceeds: 
“ It is not meant to be urged now, after a lapse of more than 20 years, that any 
serious claim can be preferred on the speculation put forward in the passages above cited. 
But it will perhaps ho admitted that the mind of the observer from whom it emanated was 
then occupied with the subject of the possibility of the remote antiquity of man in India 
