Records of Hie Geological Survey of India. 
[vol. vi. 
r. 9. 
of observation led him to the broad conclusion that the Sivalik strata were formed of 
debris conveyed through the existing river-channels (op. cit., Yol. I, p. 8), and deposited 
along the base of the mountains, it may almost be said that he never made a geological 
observation in any particular sense of the action. The most amazing instance of this ap¬ 
pears in the explanation ho gives of the absence of lakes along the base of the Himalaya, 
as compared with the Alps. He tells us (op. cit., Yol. II, p. 650,) that for ten or twelve 
years ho puzzled over this problem on the ground; yet he accounts for the absence of lakes 
along the base of the Himalaya by there never having been glaciers to prevent the silting 
up of the basins. The absence of the basins themselves seems never to have occurred 
to him, although all the Himalayan rivers are rock-borne torrents in the region of the 
missing lakes.* 
As more directly bearing upon the point before us, it would seem that, in the absence of 
such conspicuous evidence as the marine boulder-drift of Europe, separating the ossiferous 
valley-deposits from all the tertiary formations. Falconer failed to observe the very marked 
stratigraphical features that do occur. He speaks of there being no break visible in the 
tranquil succession of deposits; that “ the present physical order of things, modified only 
by alterations of level, by npbeavement and depression, could be traced back in an un¬ 
broken 1 chain to the ossiferous strata of the valley of the Narbada and of the Sivalik hills” 
( op. cit., Vol. IT, p. 570, and Quar. Jour. Geol. Soc., London, Vol. XXI, 1865, p. 386) ; 
he constantly speaks of the Sivalik hills as “ an upheave! portion of the plains of India.” 
All this is exceedingly inaccurate and misleading. I have added many proofs to at least one 
point of Falconers description, that of the distinct connection of the Sivalik deposits with the 
present local mountain-features; but the most cursory examination reveals to the geologist 
great gaps in the series of deposits. At Hard war, a place well known to Falconer, the 
old alluvial clay of the plains is found resting upon a deeply denuded surface of vertical 
topmost Sivalik strata. The relation is stratigraphieally similar, and probably nearly his¬ 
torically corresponding, to that of Loess of the Rhino to tho Molasse of Switzerland. There 
is full evidence, too, that the glacial period was sensibly felt in these regions: in the Kangra 
valley, where a range of considerable elevation (the Dhaoladhar) occurs close to the edge of 
the low hills, I found unquestionable glacial erratics scattered over a surface of the Sivalik 
formations, at a present elevation of 3,000 feet above the sea (Mem. Geol. Sur., India, 
Vol. Ill, p. 155). I do not doubt that if we could fetch up a meridional slice of the 
Gangotic plains, we should find deposits representing the whole interval indicated; and it 
is not improbable that the series may yet be picked out from outcrops in different parts of 
India. What 1 want to show is that the two terms of the scries we now have hold of—the 
old Gangotic alluvium and the Sivaliks—are very wide apart; and so, that the Sivaliks 
being older pliocene or upper mioecne, the other may be ever so recent. 
If we make any attempt to gauge the age of the old alluvium from the other side, 
we are led pretty much to the same result. All purely geological computations are 
estimates of work done; and we have the immense advantage of knowing that the 
operatives never idle, or never even take rest. Tho final appeal for tho antiquity of the 
human remains in the valley-gravels and cave-deposits of Europe is not to the little-known 
laws and conditions regulating the extinction of species, hut to the mechanical work done 
in altering the features of the country, in excavating wide valleys, or in laying out broad 
plains subsequent to the date o£ those remains. It is quite true that the result here, too, 
is only an approximation within wide limits ; that the independent variables of the problem, 
* It puzzled me to think upon whose observation Sir Charles Lyeil could have adopted such a view as this, 
as stated in his “Antiquity of Man” ( p. 319). The puzzle is now cleared up. If Sir Charles, as Falconer supposed, 
annexed information without acknowledgment, he did not always gain by the transaction. 
