FALCONER, HUGH, a Bengal medical officer, a distinguished palmontologist. He was born at Pones in 1808, and went to India in 1829. He was one of the first botanists who visited Kashmir and Little Tibet, Kamaon, and the Panjab, where he formed magnificent collections, illustrating his speciinens with voluminous notes and details of their structure and affinities. He was super intendent of the Botanic Gardens of Saharunpur ' and Calcutta. He returned to England in 1856 I or 1857, and died 31st January 1865. In the latter half of his life, he devoted his time to the study of mammalian palmontology ; and, after his death, two volumes of his palmontological memoirs and notes were published by Dr. Murchison. He and Sir T. P. Cautley examined the fossils of the Siwalik Hills ; Fauna Antigua Sivalensis, or the Fossil Fauna of the Siwalik Hills, Cautley and Falconer, Land. 1845-1846, folio. He wrote an Account of Fossil Bones at Hurdwar, in Bl. As. Trans. 1837, vi. 233 ; On Elastic Samlstone, ibid. 240 ; On the Geology of Perim Island, Gulf of Cambay, iu Lend. Geol. Trans. 1845, i. 365. Of the many varied subjects treated of in the palmonto logical memoirs, there are several of great interest even to the general reader. His investigations have shown that, at a period geologically recent, the present Peninsula of India was a triangular isltual, bounded on each side by the Eastern and Western Ghats, converging to Cape Comorin,while the ba.se of the triangle was formed by the Vindliya
mountain range, from which an irregular spur (forming the Aravalli mountains) extended north wards ; while between tho northern shore of.this island and a hilly country, which is now tho Hima laya mountains, ran a narrow ocean strrut: The bed of this strait became covered with debris from the adjacent Himalaya on its northern shore, and with this debris becamo entombed aud preserved many and various animal remains. The present condition of the country has been produced by an upheaval of the land, so that what was tho ocean strait forms now tho plains of India,—the long, nearly level valleys in which flows the Ganges and the Indus. Besides this, a great uphe,avement along the line of the Himalaya has elevated. a narrow belt of the plains into tho Siwalik Hills (deter mined to be but of tertiary age), and.added many thousand feet to the height of the Himalaya.. In the Siwalik explorations, Dr. Falconer and. Sir T.. P. Cautley discovered the sivatherium, a gigantic , four-horned ruminant-like animal, considered by Dr. Falconer to luive been furnished with a trunk like the tapir ,• also certain fossil apes, the first ever discovered, and a gigantic tortoise, Colosso chely.s atlas, a description of which was com municated to the Zoological Society in the year 1844.