1888-89.] Notes on Natural History in India. 201 



average, nearly a million of inhabitants. The county of Banda 

 is about eighty miles long and thirty miles broad, and consists 

 of two distinct tracts. The southern part of the county 

 belongs to the southern uplands, and the northern part of 

 the county to the alluvial plains ; but both present excep- 

 tional characters. With regard to the southern part, as it 

 belongs to the southern uplands, the surface rock should be 

 basalt, and so no doubt it once was ; but all the basalt has 

 been removed by denudation, and what one now sees is granite, 

 covered by a thin layer of sandstone. !N"othing can be more 

 picturesque than the scenery at the point where the southern 

 upland passes into the alluvial plain. The upper thin layer 

 of sandstone is scarped as if cut perpendicularly with a knife, 

 while the granite beneath slopes down to the plain like the 

 glacis of a fort. The alluvial plain itself, near the point of 

 junction, is dotted all over with enormous boulders of granite, 

 often piled one on the top of another. Many of the outer 

 hills are natural strongholds, and were utilised as such in the 

 troubled times, before the British conquest. One of the most 

 famous of these, the ruined hill-fort of Callinger, is in the 

 county of Banda. It is a detached rock, syenite at the base, 

 sandstone above, and is now overgrown with custard-apple — 

 a plant not indigenous to India. The alluvial part of Banda 

 county is also peculiar. Generally speaking, the alluvial 

 plains of the Indus and Ganges are composed of substances 

 washed down from the Himalayas — that is to say, granite, 

 mica-schist, and limestone. The Banda part of the alluvial 

 plain is essentially composed of basalt from the southern up- 

 lands. The Himalayan alluvium forms a light-coloured soil, 

 admirably adapted for cereals and sugar-cane. The basalt 

 alluvium suits cereals well, but it suits cotton and the pulses 

 better. Sugar-cane it does not suit at all. This basalt al- 

 luvium is of a black colour, and very retentive of moisture. 

 In dry weather it splits up into lumps, which are very hard, 

 and when force is used, break with a conchoidal fracture. It 

 is generally named the black cotton soil, because it is so well 

 suited for growing cotton ; but it might also be called the 

 black lentil soil. The surface is everywhere furrowed by deep 

 ravines, running north and south from the southern hills to 

 the river Jumna, and forming the drainage system of the 



