68 
Records of (he Geological Survey of India. 
[vol. t. 
immediate affinity. This opinion was founded upon a canine tooth of an old animal, which 
is figured and described in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Yol. VI, p. 359). 
Five years afterwards, in 1812, I instituted a close comparison between the fossil specimen 
and the corresponding tooth of three skulls of the Orang-Outang, contained in the Museum 
of the Asiatic Society in Calcut fci, and found that their agreement was so close that I con¬ 
jectured that the extinct Sewalik form had been a large Ape allied to Pit hems satyrus. 
“ A quudrumanous astragalus derived from the same strata approached in form and pro¬ 
portions so near to that of the existing Honumau Monkey, Semiwpitliccus entellns that the 
help of the callipers had to be put in requisition to enable us, in 1836, to discriminate them 
by differences not exceeding millimetres. The distinction between the fossil and the recent 
bone is hardly greater than that which might he expected to occur in any two individuals 
of the living species. Here, then, was clear evidence, physical and organic, that the present 
order of things had set in from a very remote period in India, Every condition was suited 
to the requirements of man. The lower animals which approach him nearest in physical 
structure were already numerous. The wild stocks from which ho trains races to bear 
his yoke in domesticity were established. Why then, in the light of a natural enquiry, 
might not the human race have made its appearance at that time in the same region P 
Cuvier, notwithstanding his strong bias in favor of the modern appearance of the human 
race, admitted, in language which has often been overlooked in Intel - discussions, that man 
may have lived before the last great revolutions which were the subject of tiis disquisition : 
‘ Tout porto done a crotro epic t’espoce humaine n’existait point dans les pays on se deeouvrent 
les os fossiles, a 1’epoque dcs revolutions qui ont enfoui ces os; car il n’y aurait eu aucune 
raison pourqu’elle eehappat ton to entiere a dcs catastrophes atissi generates, ct pour qtie ses 
restes ne se retrouvassent pas aujourd’hui conune ceux dcs autres animaux ; mats je n’en 
veux pas eonclure que 1’homme n’existait du tout avant cotta epoquo. 11 pouvait ha-biter 
quniques contrees pen etendues, d’ou il a repeuplb la terre aprfes ces evenements terrlbles,’ &c. 
The valley of the Gauges seemed to present the exceptional conditions here demanded; it 
was exempt, from the protracted submergence under the ocean, the effects of which on 
Europe suggested the idea of cataclysmic revolutions. I dwell upon the subject now in 
the hope that, when the palaeontological exploration of the Sewalik Hills and Nerbudda 
valley, or of other equivalent formations, is resumed, these remarks may attract attention 
in India, and that a keen look-out may ho kept up for remains of the large fossil Ape above 
alluded to, and for traces of man, in some form of equally remote antiquity. For it is 
not under the hard conditions of the glacial period in Europe that the earliest relics of 
the human race upon the globe are. to be sought. Like the Esquimaux, the Tehuktshes, 
and the Sumoycdcs on the. shores of the Icy Sea at the present day, man must have 
been then and there an emigrant, placed under circumstances of vigorous and uncertain 
existence, unfavorable to the struggle of life and to the maintenance and spread of the 
species. It is rather in the great alluvial valleys of tropical or sub-tropical rivers like the 
Ganges, the Irrawaddi, and the Nile where we may expect to detect the vestiges of his 
earliest abode. It is there where the necessaries of life are produced by nature in the 
greatest variety and profusion, and obtained with the smallest effort; there where climate 
exacts the least protection against the vicissitudes of the weather; and there where the 
lower animals which approach nearest to man now exist, and where their fossil remains 
turn up in the greatest variety and abundance. The earliest date to which man ha.s as yet 
been traced back in Europe is probably but as yesterday, in comparison with the epoch at 
which he made his appearance in more favored regions.” (a) 
Years since the officers of the Geological Survey engaged in Madras discovered chipped 
stone-implements identical in character and form with those so generally known from the 
Amiens and Sussex Gravels. These have been described by Messrs. Foote, King, Oldham, &e., 
but unfortunately there was nothing tending to determine exactly their age. They occurred 
abundantly in a lateritic conglomerate, or somewhat compacted gravel, near to, or on the 
surface; others, again, more nearly approaching in character the flake now described had been 
discovered in the vicinity of Jubbulpoor. Those latter, as is this Moongee specimen, exactly 
represent the flakes so frequently found "associated with human remains in Europe, under 
M. H. Falconer. Paleontological Memoirs and Xotes, Vol. II, p. 578, and Qtiar. Jour. Geol. Soc., London 
Vol. XXI, 1865, p. 388. i , ■% , 
