FT. 3.] 
Agate-fluke from Godavery. 
67 
on palaeontological evidence. It is true that the expressed view is, that the Colossochelys 
may have lived down to an early epoch of the human period, and not that man had lived 
back to he a contemporary of the tortoise, now proved to have been miocene. But the 
two views are reciprocal; and the form of expression selected on the occasion was that which 
was least calculated to provoke ridicule, or to shock the strong prejudices on the subject 
which were then dominant among educated men.* And so firmly was-not merely the 
possibility, but the-probability of the case impressed upon our minds, that Captain Cautley 
and myself were constantly on the look-out for the turning up, in some shape or other, 
of evidences of man out of the strata of the Sewalik Hills, partly from considerations 
of a different order, to which I shall briefly allude. 
“ The cataclysmic speculations of Cuvier and the diluvial theory of Buckland were then 
exploded. The wide spread of the plains of India showed no signs of the unstratified 
superficial gravels, sands, and clays, which for a long time were confidently adduced as 
evidence that a great diluvial wave had suddenly passed over Europe and other continents, 
overwhelming terrestrial life, and leaving the marks of its course and violent action in those 
enormous deposits of transported debris. Every section along the Gangetic plain indicated 
that the superficial strata there were of local origin, and the result of tranquil sedimentary 
deposition. Viewed in the light of a strictly physical inquiry, the chief rational argument 
in support of the opinion that the advent of man upon the earth dates from a very modern 
epoch was first, the negative evidence in the non-occurrence of human relics, and next the 
fact that taking him in conjunction with the mammals with whom he is now associated, they 
appeared, as a group, to belong to a new order of things strikingly different from that of the 
immediately preceding period. The mammoths, wool-clad rhinoceros, the cave-lions, and 
spelsean hyenas, the Irish elk, &o., of the European fauna were all extinct, although the 
carcasses of some of them had been discovered, under favorable circumstances, in the most 
perfect state of preservation. Pacts of corresponding import were yielded by a glance cast 
upon the latest palaeontology of the American Continent. There also the huge extinct 
edentata, the mammoth, and the mastodon indicated a different order of life, especially from 
that now existing. But in India the problem presented itself under another aspect. There 
no break was visible in the tranquil succession of deposits, no interference of a general 
oceanic submergence, followed by incoherent beds of sand and gravel, no intercalation of 
glacial phenomena to disturb tlie previous system. Tin? present physical order of things 
-modified only by alterations of level, by upheavemenl and depressions—could be traced back, 
in an unbroken chain, to the ossiferous strata of the valley of the Nurbudda and of the 
Sewalik Hills. Results in harmony with these indications were .yielded by a retrospect cast 
upon the system of organized life. The Mastodons, the Siegodons, and the Loxodnn 
Elephants were extinct, as were also the Simtherium, the GKaUcatkemum , the three-toed 
Hipparion-Tr.orse, the llexaprotodon, the Mery copotamns, and other peculiar forms. But 
they were found associated in the same Sewalik deposits with species of true Eqnus, of Camel 
and of Giraffe, the two last being characteristic cotemporaries of man at the present time. 
The pliocene fauna of the Ncrbudda valley produced, along with the miocene Strgnrlrm 
insignia of tlie Sewalik Hills, an extinct Elephant (E. Namadiens) , the dental system of which 
is closely allied to that of the existing Indian species ; a true Hippopotamus, and, not to 
mention others, a true Taurine Ox, Bos Namadiens, and a huge Buffalo, B, (Bubahts) 
(Palaindicus), which is nearly approached by the living ‘Arnee’ of the forests of Assam, 
being the stock from which the domestic Buffalo of Oriental countries is supposed to have 
sprung. That the actual order of the present system of life had begun during the Sewalik 
period was indicated by the living Ghana! Crocodile and Emys tecta, being found associated 
with the extinct mammalian forms. And of the latter, some, like Stegodon msignis, accom¬ 
panied by a species of Tfexaprotodon , descended to the pliocene period of the Nerbudda 
fauna, to he associated with a true Taurine Ox and with a Buffalo which hardly appears to 
differ more from the living Arnee than does the ancient Bison prisons from the living 
Aurochs. Another fact chimed in with special force. Among the four or five species of 
Sewalik Quadrmuana alluded to above, one was inferred by Sir Proby Cautley and myself, in 
1837, to have been a large Ape, exceeding the size of tlie Orang-Outang, but of unknown 
* M. SI. fiurritfou anil Filliol recently (April 20th, 1HHS), requested tlie opening of n sealed packet, which 
they had deposited with the Academy of sciences, Paris, so loner since as 1864. In this they had shewn (lie 
probability ol' man’s existence in the miocene age, from observations made in the deposits of Sansan. The 
evidence consists of bones split, longitudinally, &e. 
