INDIAN GEOLOGY. 135 



Neumayr and others have based their view that Africa and 

 India were at one time united by a continent which 

 stretched across the Indian Ocean. The facts on which 

 they rely are briefly these : The Cretaceous fauna of the 

 north-west of the Indian Peninsula is very different from 

 that of the south and east. The former is allied to the 

 Cretaceous fauna of Europe ; the latter closely resembles 

 that of South Africa. 



On the western side of India the chief area of Cre- 

 taceous rocks occurs in the valley of the Narbada near the 

 turn of Bagh. Fossils are not very abundant, but they are 

 of great interest, An attempt has been made 1 to show 

 that the whole of the European Cretaceous from the albian 

 to the senonian is represented ; but the palaeontological 

 evidence is entirely insufficient to support this idea, and 

 Oldham 2 returns the older view that the Bao-fi beds are 

 all of cenomanian age. By far the greater number of forms 

 which have been determined with certainty occur also in 

 Europe. 



On the east coast of India matters are entirely different. 

 In the neighbourhood of Trichinopoly, Pondicherry and 

 Viruddhachalam three distinct horizons are recognisable. 3 

 The lowest contains such typical cenomanian forms as 

 Ammonites rotomagensis ; the middle includes the turonian 

 forms Am. peramplus, etc. ; and the upper beds contain 

 Nautilus danicus, Inoceramus Cripsi, Crania ignabergensis, 

 which are characteristic of the senonian or danian. Thus 

 the correspondence with the European sequence is fairly 

 close ; but in spite of this the greater number of the forms 

 are absolutely unknown in Europe. Indeed out of a total 

 of nearly 800 species of invertebrates found in South India, 

 less than one-sixth occur in any European country. Simi- 



1 Bose. " Ceology of the Lower Narbada Valley between Nimawar and 

 Kawant." Mem. Geol. Surv. India, xxi., pt. i. (1884). 



2 Manual, second edition, p. 251. 



3 See H. F. Blanford, " On the Cretaceous and other Rocks of the 

 South Arcot and Trichinopoly districts, Madras," Mem. Geol. Surv. India, 

 iv., pt. i. (1862); Stoliczka and Blanford, "The Cretaceous fauna of 

 Southern India," Pal. Ind. 



