50 
Records of the Geological Survey of India. 
[vol. VI. 
For those who are not posted up in such matters, it is well to point out the considerable 
historical license that is taken in this application of the name pliocene. In the accepted 
geological nomenclature the tertiary formations end with the newer pliocene. Although the 
post-tertiary period is as nothing compared with the preceding geological ages, it still 
represents a great lapse of time, for an estimate of which we are entirely dependent upon 
geological evidence. After passing the recent, or prehistoric, period, in which all the animals 
are of existing species, we get into the post-pliocene, or pleistocene, period, in which a 
variable proportion of the mammalian remains are of extinct species ; and according to the 
distribution of these extinct mammalia, the deposits are arranged into late, middle, and early 
pleistocene. Nearly all the old river-gravels and cave-deposits with the human remains, 
about which so much has been published in the last, few years, belong to the late pleistocene, 
or, as it is sometimes called, the quaternary period ; this name being sometimes also used as 
equivalent to the whole pleistocene, and preferably so in my opinion, as distinctly marking 
its post-tertiary date. Thus it may be said roughly that the oldest human remains in Europe 
only take us about half-way hack in that post-tertiary time. Almost, the whole of the 
glacial period,—during which England was in great part submerged, and the glaciers of the 
Alps filled the great valley of Switzerland to high up on the flanks of the Jura,—intervenes 
between those ossiferous valley-gravels and the newer pliocene, or even the early pleistocene. 
Some supposed evidence of human remains has been brought forward from pliocene strata in 
England, and even from miocene beds in France, in the form of perforated shells, scratched 
and split hones, and very rudely-chipped stones ; but the correctness of these interpretations 
has been denied by competent and quite unprejudiced judges.* It may, therefore, he said 
that from the stand-point of existing information, the genuineness of human remains from 
pliocene strata, or the true pliocene age of strata containing human remains, would call for 
particular proof; or, not to disguise the point, supposing (as seems almost probable) man to 
be an exalted chimpanzee, it is quite an open question whether the change may not have 
occurred in post-tertiary times—so little positive is still our knowledge of geologic time 
and of the method of organic evolution. 
Even some geologists seem to need to ho reminded that the tertiary period and its 
sub-divisions are based upon tlie tcstaeea only, upon the proportion of living to extinct 
species of fossil shells, not of fossil remains in general. The fitness of this limitation was 
guaranteed in the first instance by the judgment of its distinguished author; and it has 
been justified by the universal adoption of the classification based upon it. It is with no 
small astonishment, therefore, that we hear of the grounds given by Falconer for calling the 
older deposits of the Indian rivers pliocene. After telling us (Pal. Mem., Vol. II, p. 644), 
on the authority of the Geological Survey, that the shells are all of existing forms, although 
in somewhat, different proportions to those now inhabiting the Narbada valley, he adds:— 
“ In designating the formation as pliocene, which I have done during many years, I have 
been guided by the indications of the mammalian fauna, as intermediate between the 
miocene of the Irrawadi, Perim Island, and the Sivalik hills, and that of the existing 
period.” That is, he takes upon himself to use the word pliocene in a sense quite foreign 
to that in universal use. The dilfetence noticed here in the relative strength of the molluscan 
species in the living and the fossil stages is nothing like so great as that in the post-pliocene 
deposits of Europe. For the living relations of some of the species, even in the late pleisto¬ 
cene deposits of England, one has to go to the Mediterranean or to sub-arctic waters. The 
whole ground of Falconer’s position is placed upon the mammalian fauna. The act is thus 
either a deliberate attempt to revolutionise the meaning of part of our best established 
geological nomenclature, or else the word pliocene is applied in a more abstract sense, im- 
Opinion may be reserved at present upon the miocene age of Mr. Calvert’s fossil drawings. 
