Geology. 375 



" * \. The granitic rocks include — granite, to which is subordinate cubic 

 quartz-rock, greenstone, in veins and beds ; gneiss, to which is subordi- 

 nate hornblende slate, crystalline limestone, crystalline dolomite, mica-slate 

 chlorite, talc-slate, and quartz-rock. 



" ' 2. The schistose rocks include sandstone, crystalline, conglomerate 

 and cemented, which passes into clay-slate, calcareous clay-slate, and cal- 

 careous-slate, to which are subordinate, Jlinty slate^ diamond breccia, and 

 coal measures. 



" ' 3. The basaltic, or overlying, and intruding rocks, include basalt, 

 wacken, amygdaloid, iron-clay or lacterite, which is sometimes directly 

 superimposed on granite and gneiss. 



" ' 4. The diluvian lands or plains, black soil from the debris of trap 

 rocks. Diluvium of the Doab, and plains of the Ganges, including the 

 beds of calcareous conglomerate, or kunkur.' 



'* He then proceeds. — ' I am convinced that very few additions will be 

 made to my synopsis. There is nothing in India resembling the oolite, the 

 chalk, or the London clay. Up to the present period, I am inclined to 

 think that both the granite and gneiss of India are contemporaneous, as 

 they are perpetually passing into each other, and have the same subordi- 

 nate rocks ; I think it probable they owe their difference of structure to a 

 different mode of consolidation. At present, also, I am disposed to think 

 that the stratified rocks are the oldest in point of time ; but I will not an- 

 ticipate: the antique history of India and geology are intimately connected 

 in the history of the trap rocks, as exemplified in the tradition of towns 

 having been overwhelmed by showers of black mud. Lately reading an 

 account of Sclotthiem's discovery of human bones, he says that they were 

 always calcined, and deprived of their animal gluten. Does he mean to'^ 

 say that they had lost their carbonic acid ? Do you think that if India 

 "was inhabited before the deluge, there would not have been some remains 

 of animals in its vast and numerous diluvial plains ? It has been a favourite 

 speculation with some philosophers that the aborigines of India, the Goands 

 (who differ most remarkably in their manners and customs from the Hin- 

 doos,) escaped from the waters of the deluge on the high mountains in the 

 interior. There appears to me to be a great resemblance in the animal and 

 vegetable productions all over India. I do not think that I have seen any 

 thing which you have not got in the vicinity of Calcutta.' 



" In another letter, dated 22d February 1824, he says : — * I am making 

 a barometrical section and geological sketch of the country as I proceed, 

 and shall have, by the time I reach Calcutta, made a great addition to the 

 geological map of India. I have been struck, during my travels in India, 

 by the great sameness of the productions, that is to say, of the same soil. 

 If I were told such is the soil of A, I think I could tell exactly the mode 

 of cultivation, the grain or produce, the fauna and the sylva. This is, no 

 doubt, owing to the fewness of the formations and their great extent. Ever 

 since I left Sumbhulpoor I have been travelling on gneiss, which passes 

 into granite with the usual trap veins of that formation in India ; also 

 into mica-schist, containing beds and veins of hornblende-rock and horn- 

 blende-schist and quartz rock ; the mica-schist passes into chlorite-schist.'' 

 —Cal. Gov. Gaz. 



