yime 26, 1879] 



NATURE 



193 



Africa, and indeed the palaiontological and physical 

 parallelism of the Karoo and Gondwana formations 

 generally is now well known. 



The peninsular area affords no instance of any fos- 

 siliferous rock of older date than the Gondwdna system. 

 But a large area to the north of Madras, another in 

 Chhatisgarh, east of Nagpur, a third very extensire tract 

 in Bundelkhand and Malwa, partly covered by trap, but 

 still exposed over a surface of 40,000 square miles, and 

 some smaller tracts in the valleys of the Kishna and 

 Bhima rivers are occupied by a massive and quite un- 

 altered series of sandstones, limestones, and shales of 

 great thickness which have received the name of the 

 Vindhyan System. From the fact that both in Bundel- 

 khand and Hyderabad diamonds are found imbedded in 

 these rocks, the name "diamond sandstone" was given 

 by Capt. >fewbold to a portion of these rocks, but the 

 name was erroneously extended to the much later sand- 

 stones of the Gondwdna formation, an error only cleared 

 up by the labours of the Geological Survey. Beyond the 

 fact that the Vindhyan system cannot be newer than 

 Lower Paljeozoic, nothing whatever is known of its age. 

 Repeated search in the limestones and shales, however 

 promising in appearance, has revealed no trace of any 

 fossil organism, and it is impossible to correlate them 

 with any group of rocks in the extra- Peninsular area, or, 

 indeed, elsewhere. Below and older than these again, 

 are two, or perhaps more, series of submetamorphic 

 rocks, which, under various local names, have been 

 mapped and described in many parts of the Peninsula, 

 and all rest on the fundamental gneiss, which, whether of 

 one or many ages, is everywhere the oldest rock, and is 

 still exposed over nearly half the area. 

 . .The only remaining extensive formation of the'Peninsula 

 is the great Deccan trap-flow, the most extensive volcanic 

 formation in the world. The age of this formation is now 

 definitely fixed as Upper Cretaceous. Except in the 

 neighbourhood of Bombay, where it dips with a gentle 

 inclination beneath the sea, the successive flows are 

 perfectly horizontal, occasionally interbedded with thin 

 deposits of freshwater origin, and at one place, near 

 Rajahmahendri, with an estuarine deposit. The area 

 still covered by this formation is estimated at little less 

 than 200,000 miles, and there are proofs of its former 

 existence throughout nearly ten degrees of latitude and 

 sixteen of longitude. For the discussion of the many 

 interesting problems presented by this great manifesta- 

 tion of volcanic energy, we must refer the reader to the 

 origin 1I work. 



In passing from peninsular India to the encircling 

 mountains we pass from an old continent to a new one, 

 from a relic of a mesozoic land area, to the Asia of ter- 

 tiary and post-tertiary times, and from a region where 

 prolonged denudation has long since obliterated all but 

 the merest traces of original mountain" structure, leaving 

 water-worn bosses of hard crystalline rock-cores or 

 scarped slopes and sculptured platforms of horizontal 

 trap or sandstone, to one where the latest deposits of 

 tertiary times are so contorted and faulted as to render 

 the task of disentangling the geological relations of the 

 formations sometimes one of extreme difficulty. 



The history of the Him.ilayan system, which, in addi- 

 tion to the Himalaya proper, includes the Indus ranges 



and those of the Burmese peninsula, begins in eocene 

 times. It is considered by Mr. Medlicott that the very 

 ancient slaty rocks which now form" the greater part of 

 the mountain mass south of the snowy range, and which 

 he designates as the '' Lower Him.ilaya," had undergone 

 no contortion prior to the nummulitic period ; and that 

 immediately before its partial depression beneath the 

 nummulitic sea, this area had been long exposed to de- 

 nudation as " part of a land of doubtful configuration." 

 It is still somewhat^doubtful to what age are to be as- 

 signed the slaty formations here spoken of. As yet they 

 have yielded no recognisable fossil remains, and they 

 present no such similarity of character to the formations 

 north of the main axis in Zanskar and Hundes, where 

 rocks rich in fossil organisms have been described by 

 Gerard, Strachey, Stoliczka, and others, as to allow of 

 more than a speculative correlation. A recent observa- 

 tion of Mr. Lydekker's in the Pir Panjdl range of Kashmir, 

 throws however some little light on the question. The 

 rocks of the slaty series extend in a north-west direction 

 to the Pir Panjdl range, and a limestone which there 

 occurs at the top of the series, and appears to be identical 

 with the Krol limestone (also the highest member) of the 

 series near Simla, has been identified by Mr. Lydekker as 

 Carboniferous. From this it would appear that rocks of 

 mesozoic age are completely absent from the Lower 

 Himtilaya, and are restricted to certain areas north of 

 the snowy range, and in the extreme north-west to certain 

 parts of Kashmir, and we may add, the western extremity 

 of the Salt Range. 



Only in the Eastern Himalaya, viz., at the base oFtte 

 Sikkim hills, have we any indtibiiable representative 'of 

 the characteristic fresh water formations of the peninsula. 

 In 1S49, Dr. (now Sir Joseph) Hooker, detected some of 

 the well-known fossil plants of the Bengal coal-bearing 

 (Damuda) formation in certain shaley beds exposed at 

 the foot of the hills near Pankabdri, on the road to Darji- 

 ling, and this observation, subsequently followed up by Mr. 

 W. T. Blanford, and more recently by Mr. Mallet, has led 

 to the recognition of a band of Lower Gondwdna rocks, 

 occupying a narrow zone between the tertiary sandstones 

 of the Terai and the talcose slates of the outer hills. The 

 connection between the Eastern and Western Himalaya 

 remains, however, to be traced out, the intervening king- 

 dom of Nipdl being unfortunately closed by the suspicious 

 jealousy of its Hindu rulers, equally to the general tra- 

 veller, the trader, and the man of science. It is however 

 pointed out by the authors of the Manual, that the pro- 

 bably palaeozoic slates, sandstones, and limestones of the 

 Lower Himalaya were originally deposited on a highly 

 eroded surface of ancient gneiss, and probably in hollows, 

 and it is suggested by Mr. Blanford, that like the ancient 

 unfossiliferous formations of the peninsula, they may be 

 of freshwater origin, and that the Lower Himdlaya may, 

 after all, have formed a portion of the same paleozoic 

 and mesozoic continent, around the shores of which were 

 deposited the fossiliferous shales and limestones of 

 Zansk.ir, Hundes, and the Western Salt Range, in which 

 case the chain of the Himalayas must have originated 

 along a portion of the ancient coast-line. And we may 

 observe that the junction of the north and south ranges of 

 the lower Indus valley with the north-west and south-east 

 ridges of the Himalaya coincides in a general way with 



