OF SOUTHERN INDIA. 483 
few fossil types not as yet met with below these strata, is simply to impede the 
progress of science. Field geology has yet a great task to solve. 
The character of the South Indian cretaceous fauna of the Gastropoda is not 
only decidedly cretaceous, but it is decidedly wpper cretaceous. All the 30 species 
which have been identified with European ones occur in upper cretaceous strata, 
hardly any (at least not with undoubted certainty) below the Cenomanien, while 
the largest number is found in the Turonien and Senonien beds. Besides I may 
mention that many of the species, at present not identified, have a very great 
resemblance to others from the two last named series of beds, and more identi- 
fications may still in time be established. 
Thus the conclusion formed from the examination of the Gastropoda alone would 
place the lowest beds of our South Indian cretaceous deposits higher than that 
formed from the examination of the Cephalopoda. I formerly stated that the South 
Indian cretaceous beds represented the deposits from the Gault to the Senonien. 
The Gastropoda have, it may be said, not yielded a single species identical with a 
typical one from the Gault,* and as most of the species of Cephalopoda which I 
have previously quoted as occurring in the Gault have been shown to pass higher 
into the Cenomanien beds, the present conclusions regarding the age of the South 
Indian cretaceous beds appear to be nearer the truth. I need hardly, however, 
repeat that they must not be considered final, being based merely upon a partial 
examination of the fauna. 
The uppermost of our deposits, the Arrialoor group, have a great relation 
to the Senonien beds of Aachen and North Germany. When lately at Paris I also 
noticed in a collection, which Prof. Hebert made from the “craie pisolitique” 
near that capital, two of our common species of Cerithiwm, C. Arcotense and 
mauguratum (see pp. 193 and 197). 
* Scala? Clementina is doubtfully identical; Cerithiwm trimonile and Alaria Parkinsoni and a few others 
occur in the Gault and in the Cenomanien. 
