559 

ieee of the papers recently published in the 
Records of the Geological Survey of India 
naturally take the form of shading with details the 
general outline previously known. Some ofthe results 
published in the last general report of the director 
(Records, Geological Survey of India, vol. 54, Part 1) 
are, however, of special interest as showing that some 
of the previously accepted outlines need reconsidera- 
tion. We have space to notice only one of them at 
this stage, and that because the director’s announce- 
ment may not be superseded for some time by a 
more detailed description. 
Among the results hitherto regarded as final 
has been the conclusion that the Peninsula of India 
has never been submerged beneath the sea since early 
Palaeozoic times, except for narrow strips extending 
not far from the present coast lines. Towards the end 
of 1921, however, the discovery by Mr. K. P. Sinor of 
a very thin marine bed at the base of the Lower 
Gondwana system, on the small coalfield at Umaria in 
the Rewah State of Central India, suggested a review 
of the previously accepted view regarding the stability 
of the peninsular Horst. Early last year, after this 
discovery had been reported to the director of the 
Geological Survey of India, a field collector was 
deputed to obtain further specimens, and these 
included, besides Productus, a species of Spiriferina 
telated to and probably identical with Spiriferina 
cristata var. octoplicata. 
This discovery thus unexpectedly provides evidence 
of the fact that the sea in Carboniferous times tres- 
passed on to the continent of Gondwanaland farther 
than was previously suspected; for the Umaria 
coalfield is some 500 miles from the present west coast, 
400 miles from the east coast, and 400 miles from the 
marine formations which lie away to the north of 
the crystalline axis of the Himalayan range. In 
view of the fact that portions of the western States 
of Central India and the northern parts of the Bombay 
Presidency were invaded by the sea just before the 
outflow of the great Deccan trap early in Cretaceous 
times, one is tempted naturally to regard marine 
trespass from the west as the most natural line of 
NATURE 


[APRIL 21, 1923: 
Discovery of Marine Beds at the Base of the Gondwana System in Central India. 
advance and subsequent retreat; but there is a 
possibility also that this Productus bed in Rewah 
records the spread southward of the Permo-Carboni- 
ferous sea which left thick masses of Productus lime- 
stone in the Punjab, Kashmir, and Tibetan plateau. — 
The discovery is thus one of very great interest 
to students of geomorphology ; but though doubtless 
the basal (Talchir) rocks of the Gondwana system will 
now be searched afresh with renewed hope, the 
chances of finding further evidence are remote. The 
coal seams of peninsular India all lie above the 
Talchirs, and mining operations naturally are not 
carried below the coal beds for purely scientific 
objects, while it is only around the edges of the coal 
basins that narrow strips of the underlying Talchirs 
occasionally peep out. The surface is fairly flat—a 
soil-covered peneplain which is lapped over on its 
northern margin by the mantle of Gangetic alluvium 
of unknown thickness. 
Some years ago this discovery would have had a 
double interest ; for the problem of correlating the 
great freshwater Gondwana system with the standard 
stratigraphical scale was the occasion of some contro- 
versy due to differences of opinion which naturally 
follow indirect inferences from homotaxis. But 
twenty years ago characteristic members of the Lower 
Gondwana Glossopteris flora were found associated 
with Productus beds in Kashmir, whither presumably 
they were carried by one of the rivers then running 
from Gondwanaland into the great Eurasian ocean 
known to geomorphologists as Tethys. The base-line 
thus became definitely established and at a level in 
the vertical scale near that which W. T. Blanford and 
others had advocated from indirect evidence many 
years before. Blanford lived long enough to hear 
of the Kashmir discovery, which proved that in the 
Indian region the Productus marine fauna and Glos- 
sopteris land flora were contemporaneous. What 
polemics would have been saved, probably, if he had 
surveyed the Central Indian instead of the economic- 
ally more important eastern coalfields, and had thus 
been able to start from a recognisable stratigraphical 
base line on the Peninsula itself. 
The Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. 
‘THIS teaching and research institution was 
opened two years ago, and an account of its 
work is given in a paper by one of the staff, Major 
Knowles. The laboratory has four floors with 
220 feet of north light and a shorter wing at right 
angles to the main front, while the special hospital 
for tropical diseases has more than 100 beds, both 
having been constructed and partially endowed at a 
cost of about 120,000/., nearly two-thirds of which 
were raised by the founder, Sir Leonard Rogers, and 
by Major Knowles. The staff of whole-time pro- 
fessors and research workers now numbers thirty- 
three, special laboratories and investigators being 
provided for kala-azar, dysenteries, ankylostomiasis, 
leprosy (for which a separate institute is to be built 
opposite the school at a cost of another 20,000/.), 
diabetes and filariasis, all in addition to the teaching 
staff of the school. The departments now number 
seventeen, three or four sections commonly combining 
on one research under the director, Col. J. W. D. 
Megaw, thus furnishing the team work so essential 
to success, 
The teaching is purely post-graduate, the number 
admitted being limited to 50 by strict selection. 
The course for the diploma in hygiene lasts nine 
months and that in tropical medicine six months, 
NO. 2790, VOL. III] 
against four in the Liverpool and three in the London 
School of Tropical Medicine. After an hour’s clinical 
work in the hospital, a lecture is given illustrated 
by numerous lantern slides, epidiascope pictures, and 
cinematograph films. This is followed by practical 
work in the class-rooms for the rest of the day illus- 
trating the same subject, after which that lecturer is 
free for the rest of the week for research and prepara- 
tion for his next class. : 
In the short time the Institution has been open, 
important work has been published, or is in the press, 
on the pathology and treatment of leprosy by Muir ; 
on the diagnosis by a new test and the treatment 
of kala-azar by Napier; on the differentiation of 
chronic dysenteries by the reactions of the stools by 
Knowles and Napier; on the poisonous amines of 
dysentery and cholera bacilli, and also in lathyrism 
and epidemic dropsy by Acton, Chopra (professor — 
of pharmacology), and S. Ghosh (chemist). Tropical 
skin diseases are being closely studied with the help 
of the full-time artist and the photographer of the 
school. Every case admitted is worked out clinically 
and microscopically by all the sections concerned, and 
careful records are kept. This cannot fail in due time 
to result in important additions to our knowledge of 
tropical diseases in view of the unrivalled clinical 
