part - 3 .] Medlicoll: Ossiferous deposits of the Narbada valley. 51 
plying that these deposits in India belong to the age of the pliocene of Europe. Falconer 
cannot be acquitted of the grave error involved in the former position; and one scarcely 
knows whether the error is aggravated or palliated by the fact that his judgment was here 
influenced by his temper. It is painfully evident in his later writings that he took a pleasure 
in ignoring and crossing the authority of Sir Charles Lyell. It was not only to Indian 
deposits that Falconer applied his independent criterion of classification: upon the evidence 
of the fossil mammalia he designated the well-known pro-glacial forest-bed of Norfolk 
as pliocene, in defiance of established usage (loc. cit., Yol. II, pp. 190, 586). One need hardly 
say that his attempt has been by common consent ignored. In a very recent note upon 
tbe classification of the pleistocene deposits, Dr. Boyd Dawkins points out the very marked 
difference even of the mammalia of the forest-bed from that of the pliocene (Am. Jour., 
April 1873). 
The hint thus given to geologists in India is a very strong one ; and the matter would 
scarcely have been worth notice hut for the apparent sanction recently given to Falconer’s 
words. We are in a manner bound to reject Falconer’s criterion as such; and it only 
remains to he seen whether in some non-regulation sense the Narbada deposits, and with 
them the old alluvium of the Gangetic plains, can be of pliocene ago. It is of course 
conceivable, albeit in contravention of the harmonics of nature so far as known, that the 
mammalian fauna might he very strongly in favor of the position taken up by Falconer. 
Although the fossil shells all belong to species now living in the neighbourhood, the mamma¬ 
lian forms might (at least in argument) be of such antique types as to bear down the 
standard of the shells. Nothing of the kind, however, is the case. Falconer repeatedly 
insists, on the one hand, upon the perfect distinctness of the Narbada fauna from that of 
the Sivaliks, and on the other hand, upon its strong affinity to living forms. He speaks of the 
Narbada fossils as “in time only a little ahead of existing species” (op. cit., Yol. I, p. 21). 
He nowhere says that the Narbada fossils are in auy specific sense pliocene; but only, with¬ 
out any attempt at precision, that he calls the deposits pliocene because the mammalian 
fauna is intermediate between the iniocene of the Sivaliks and that of the existing period. 
It is a great testimony to the authority of Falconer’s name that an innovating opinion, 
without eveu an attempt at defence, should have met with any consideration. I do not, 
indeed, presume that Falconer’s statement of ago has ever received much countenance from 
students in Europe or elsewhere; but since an apparent approval of it has been issued by a 
high authority in India, it is well, on so fitting an occasion as the present, to examine the 
merits of the case. 
As regards fossil man in India, Falconer’s speculations were based a good deal upon 
biological assumption and geological misconceptions. It is not quite certain that d priori 
the oldest marks of intelligence that can be called human are to he looked for, as Falconer 
tells us, “in the great alluvial valleys of tropical or sub tropical rivers.” If the analogy of 
historical times may be taken into account, it would not be under conditions favorable to 
nakedness and laziness that we should expect contrivance to be born. We may indeed 
find the most monstrous form of the ape in the deposits of tropical regions; but it may 
be quite possible we should look for the earliest trace of humanity in the regions now 
most favourable to its development. 
Mixed up with Falconer’s mythical, biological and physieo-geographieal speculation upon 
the cradle of the human race in India, there is frequent very vague mention of geological 
conditions; and here we come upon his weak point. It is an excellent example of a 
confusion very commonly made—showing how a man may be in the first ranks as a 
palaeontologist, and in that sense a geologist, and yet possibly be a very poor geologist 
in the stricter and primary sense of the word. Although Falconer’s clear instinct 
