Page:Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol 7, Part 2.djvu/90

658 use of it in England. It is so far fortunate that I am now driven to my own resources, and compelled to invent and to make an instrument which, though quite on a different plan from that depicted in BATS’S diagram, ‘will I hope produce the same correct effects, with the additional advantage of being adjustable as to angle of the guiding plane a g, so as to regulate the force of light and shade ad libitum; while I shall moreover be at liberty to use it wherever I please.

I find that impressions in hard sealing wax answer perfectly fee ruling, in cases where parties are afraid of trusting original gem. or coins under the tracing point. But it should be remembered that the casts must be in relief like the coins, or their image will be reversed in the engraved representation.

VII.—Note on afoul Ruminant genus. allied to Ciraffi& in the Siwalik hills. By Captain P. T. CAUTLEY.

When we look at the number of species of Proboscidan Pachydermata which swarmed in the primeval forests; when we see that in the present day nature appears to have left but solitary species to attest the gigantic form of primitive existence, the imagination naturally places before our eyes forms of corresponding magnitude in other genera; we picture to ourselves gigantic ruminants and gigantic carnivora only to be revealed by the remains which nature has placed in its own keeping to exhibit to inquiring man the wisdom of design and the systematic chain of organization established throughout the whole of the animal kingdom.

Amongst the Ruminants the discovery of the Sivatherium giganteum has most amply tended to prove the truth of this induction, cxlii- - biting a ruminating animal bearing the same proportion to the rest of its genus, as the Mastodon and Elephant do to that of the Pachydermata. Amongst the Carnivora we have the Ursus Sivalenais, an animal far exceeding in dimensions its congener of the present period, or the Ursus Spelmus and bears of the German caves; with a species of hymna at least one-third larger than that now existing. The reptiles also have their gigantic representative in an entirely new genus of the tortoise, for which we propose the generic name of Megalochelys, from the enormous proportions of its remains as yet discovered, and the size of its femoral and humeral extremities equalling those of the largest rhinoceros. The question however does not appear to be whether th. animals of former periods were larger than those now existing but