192 



NATURE 



\yu7ie 26, 1879 



history and structure, they present many strongly-con- 

 trasted features. In the words of one of the writers, 

 " This [the extra-peninsular area] is geologically an in- 

 trinsic portion of the Asiatic continent, whilst peninsular 

 India is not." For many years, indeed, it seemed that 

 there was scarcely any stratigraphical link between the 

 richly fossiliferous formations of Sind, the Salt Range, 

 and the Kumaon Himalaya on the one hand, and on the 

 other, the plant-bearing or azoic shales, and thick-bedded 

 sandstones, described by Newbold, Williams, Voysey, 

 Hislop, and others, which, with volcanic and metamorphic 

 rocks, make up the greater part of the peninsula. While, 

 with the exception of the later Himalayan and Sind ter- 

 tiaries, the former are in the main of marine origin, a 

 large portion of the latter are the characteristic deposits 

 of fresh water ; and, as regards the less ancient aiid fos- 

 siliferous formations, the apparently conflicting indications 

 of age afforded by their fossil remains left it long impos- 

 sible not merely to correlate them with any recognised 

 members of the extra-peninsular formations, but even to 

 assign to them with any confidence an approximate place 

 in the general scale of geological sequence. Nor can this 

 problem even now be considered as fully solved. But the 

 scraps of evidence which, one by one, have been brought 

 -to light in the continued progress of the Survey have 

 greatly simplified it, and this evidence is ably analysed 

 and summed up in the first volume of the manual. The 

 plant-bearing formations of the Peninsula are now re- 

 garded as one great system, to which the name Gond- 

 wdna has been given, subdivided into an upper and lower 

 series, and it represents the deposits of an ancient system 

 of river valleys, dating from Permian and lasting to Ti- 

 thonian times. The lesson in geological reasoning, incul- 

 cated by the geology of these rocks, is one that deserves to 

 be carefully pondered, and in illustration of the difficulties 

 which it presents, we will quote one or two passages from 

 the fifth chapter of the Manual. To render the descrip- 

 tion more clear to the general reader we preface them 

 with an excerpt from the tabular synopsis of the Gond- 

 wdna formations at p. 108, exhibiting the accepted strati- 

 graphical relations of the different groups referred to. It 

 includes four only of the eight regions summarised in the 

 original table. 



" [Dr. Feistmantel] ascribes to the whole series an age 

 ranging from Lower Trias or Bunter (Talchir and 

 Damuda) to Middle Jurassic or Bathonian (Jabalpur and 

 Umia). His determinations, however, being founded 

 exclusively on a comparison of the Gondwina fossil 

 plants with those of European formations, are very fi-e- 

 quently opposed by other fossil evidence. The Umia beds 

 of Cutch, for instance, the flora of which is considered by 



Dr. Feistmantel of the same age as that of the Jabalpur 

 group, which is the highest Gondwdna subdivision, contains 

 several plants found also in the Lower Oolites of York- 

 shire, but the Cephalopoda of the marine beds, which 

 immediately underlie the Umia plant beds, and are, to 

 some extent, interstratified, have been shown by Dr. 

 Waagen to be uppermost Oolitic (Portland and Titho- 

 nian) forms ; and to be separated by two distinct groups 

 of beds, each with a well-marked fauna, from the under- 

 lying strata, in which lower Oolitic Cephalopoda occur. 

 In the Damudas and their representatives, on the other 

 hand, although a few fossil plants are allied to Triassic 

 species, several of the most abundant and characteristic 

 forms are unknown in the Trias of Europe, but are repre- 

 sented by the same or nearly allied plants in the coal 

 measures of Australia, the lower portion of which is cer- 

 tainly of Carboniferous age." Again, "As an example 

 of the difficulties presented in the present state of our 

 knowledge by the contradictory evidence afforded by the 

 fossils of one group, the case of the Kota-Maldri beds may 

 be cited. The Kota beds consist of limestone, and con- 

 tain remains of fish which have a liassic facies. The 

 MaMri (or Mal^di) beds have yielded two reptiles, Hype- 

 rodapedon and Parasnchus, and a fish, Ceratodus, all of 

 which are closely allied to European triassic forms. In 

 these Maldri beds some plants have been obtained com- 

 mon to the Jabalpur and Sripermatur groups, the flora of 

 the former of which has been shown to be in part identi- 

 cal with that of the Umia group of Cutch. The singularly 

 contradictory evidence of age afforded by this Umia flora 

 has already been mentioned. The Kota beds with their 

 liassic fish have now been shown to be so closely con- 

 nected with the Maldri clays and sandstones, containing 

 triassic reptiles and fish and Jurassic plants, that both are 

 classed in the same group." 



The conclusion ^which Mr. Blanford draws from this 

 apparently conflicting'evidence is the following : — 



" Assuming that the association of similar marine forms 

 in the rocks of distant countries^for instance in the Car- 

 boniferous limestone of Europe, the Punjab in India, and 

 Australia, — implies that the rocks are of contemporaneous 

 or nearly contemporaneous origin, the remarkable com- 

 bination of fossils in the Kota-Maldri beds seems to show 

 that, in [mesozoic times, there was a wider diversity 

 in the forms of terrestial life inhabiting distant regions at 

 any given period than there was in the faunas of the sur- 

 rounding seas. This view is in accordance with the very 

 similar conditions now found prevailing upon the earth's 

 surface, there being a much greater difference between the 

 terrestrial faunas and floras of Africa, Australia, and 

 America, for instance, than there is between the animals 

 inhabiting the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. 

 .... There appear, in short, good reasons for believing 

 that the terrestrial area of the world was divided into 

 zoological and botanical regions in past times as it is at 

 present, and the fauna and flora of India may have 

 differed at times, more from those then existing in distant 

 countries, than from the animals or plants which pre- 

 vailed in the same distant regions at a different geological 

 epoch." 



At the very base]]of the Gondwana system occurs that 

 remarkable bed of silt containing transported boulders 

 which is held by the authors, and we believe we may now 

 say by all members'of the Geological Survey of India, to 

 afford evidence of the action of ice, probably ground ice ; 

 and it is not a little striking that the most conclusive 

 evidence of this agency, viz., polished and grooved boulders 

 resting on a surface ,of limestone equally polished and 

 scored, was met^with in latitude 20°, at an elevation of 

 about 700 feet above the sea. The resemblance of this 

 bed to that at the base of the Karoo formation of South 



