SUPERFICIAL DEPOSITS IN CUTCE. 375 



The third locality is a more remarkable one, namely, that on the north 

 side of the Kala Dongar in Patcham. It was here that the boulder-beds 

 were tirst noticed, and called loudly for some explanation. At this spot 

 there are marked on the map of the Trigonometrical Survey two long 

 projecting elevations running out at right angles from the Jurassic escarp- 

 ment, where it is coated with the subrecent concrete. These no doubt 

 were originally one, the end having been eroded along the dividing water- 

 course. Their length is f^ mile, the united breadth ^ mile,;and their eleva- 

 tion (not marked on the map) is perhaps 100 to IPO feet above the plain. 

 They have the general aspect of the tip-heaps of a cyclopean railway 

 embankment in course of construction. As seen weathered on the surface 

 they are covered with large fragments of rock from 5- cwt. downwards, more 

 or less rounded, but not scratched, and all to be apparently matched in the 

 neighbouring Jurassic hills. Where a section is seen the matrix is rubbly 

 more or less tufaceous, and tough enough to form a cliff. At the base of 

 the valley laterite isfound, and the long mounds appear to rest 

 upon it. 



In the first two localities the stratification in alternate boulder and non- 

 boulder-bearing beds may be without discussion assigned to the action of the 

 streams when they were depositing and not eroding ; but in all three cases 

 the diPBculty is to account for the carriage of the large stones and their pro- 

 miscuous heaping together. The principal agents that have been supposed to 

 possess sufficient transporting power are ice, torrents, and sea-waves. In a 

 place where the present range of temperature is between 70° and 120° it 

 is scarcely feasible to call in the aid of ice, and certainly sea-waves are out of 

 the question. In the first two, and localities where the boulder-beds 

 filled up the bottom of valleys at the end of gorges leading out from 

 lofty domes, the bottom beds may be fairly ascribed to the force of 

 the water, with or without further aid ; but those which overlie the 

 soft concrete could scarcely, one would think, be borne along in so rapid a 

 torrent that they could not even be sorted without that torrent eroding 

 the surface below. 



For the third locality, however, there seems no possibility of calling in 

 the aid of a torrent, as there is no gathering-ground for the water. The 

 whole history of the deposit must at the outside be confined within an area of 

 If square miles, on which a line no longer than 21 miles can be drawn with 

 a maximum difference of elevation of 1,150 feet. But the mounds 

 point in the direction of the scarp only 1:^ miles distant, and whose highest 

 point is only 640 feet above their surface, and for three-quarters of this dis- 

 tance the boulders occur. Nor do they fill up a valley, but form mounds on a 

 ilat surface. The only area whence the water could be obtained to form a 

 torrent would thus be the slopes of the bills opposite the mounds with an 

 average fall of only 320 feet. This appears to me quite inadequate to pro- 



