MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 718 



its soft yellow rocks melting year by year, their sqviare broken debris 

 lying tumbled round the sides of the bowl. A stream, dry most of the 

 year, drains it and carries off the melted ingredients to feed the plain 

 beyond. 



I continue along my ridge, and come to a great semi-circle, 

 sweeping round by the south, all scarped on its more northerly 

 side, with tumbled debris, all its sides dipping outwards — apparently 

 another quondam conical hill. The semi-circle is 800 yards in diameter. 

 The north side of the old cone is clean gone ; but standing out in front to 

 shelter the hollowed line is another vanguard hill dipping deep south, 

 just like the first vanguard hill did. This vanguard hill again is of 

 harder and coarser texture and preserves its fossils tightly ; much of it is 

 of volite with minute molluscs engrained. 



I cross the semi-circle and pick up my ridge again and continue across 

 the Barapur Road ; but here again rises a third vanguard hill, protecting 

 a southerly curve of the main ridge. It is of the same material and ill 

 preserved fossils as its vanguard predecessors. This vanguard and the 

 line of the ridge behind curve on to a point some 800 yards on, and then 

 both sink away, vanguard and main body, and subside under the plain of 

 shale and sandstone. A nulla a little way on shows no trace of belteram ; 

 in its walls one sees the shale of the south and the white sandstone of the 

 north brought into summary contact ; the shale has come off worst ; its 

 proud thin lines of serried strata are here crumpled up and precipitated 

 headlong downwards. 



I do not know how far geologists have noticed this jjeculiar chain of 

 rounded hills ; I do not see it specially mentioned in the Geological Survey 

 Memoirs, and I have not got Stoliczka's records. But it has seemed to me 

 worth notice, especially as the chain of curves, circles, semi-circles, &e., 

 is composed entirely of belteram, and beyond it to the south, where the 

 harder rocks or the shale overlie the belteram outcrops, you get a cessa- 

 tion, or anyhow a famine, of fossils. 



The belteram beds are full of palseontological interest apart from their 

 geological setting. Fossils abound^ — terebratuke, small and big ; thynco- 

 nellee ; pleurotomarise, ostrcea, and many other molluscs ; but the ammo- 

 nites alone are a delight in themselves. I have got from this ridge what I 

 take to be over 40 different species, probably more than 50, I have vari- 

 ous species of Phylloceras, of Oppeliee, of Harpoceras, of Stephanoceras, 

 of Peltoceras, of Aspidoceras, and of Perisphinctes, Haploceras of Amal- 

 theus I have not found. Identification of several species is a difficulty. 

 I believe several to be new to Outch. Nautilus have also been found. 



Dr. Waagen who in 1871 wrote in the Paleeontologia Indica (Ser. IX, I, 

 Vol. I, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4) on the Cutch Ammonites, illustrated and classified 

 the specimens discovered by the Geological Survey ; but it seems that he 



