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LII.—ON THE EVIDENCE IN FAVOUR OF THE BELIEF IN 
THE EXISTENCE OF FLOATING ICE IN INDIA DURING 
THE DEPOSITION OF THE TALCHIR (PERMIAN OR 
PERMIO-TRIASSIC) ROCKS, sy V. BALL, m.a., F.as. 
[Read February 16th, 1880.] 
THIS communication is made to the Society in response to a 
special request by the Rev. Dr. Haughton that I should give a 
statement of the facts which are relied upon by the Geological 
Survey of India in support of the view that a glacial period—or 
rather a period, perhaps only seasonal, of great cold existed in early 
Geological times in tropical India. 
The case which I have to lay before you rests upon evidence, 
as all must admit, very similar to that which is employed in 
support of the now pretty general belief that periods of great cold 
(glacial periods) have occurred in temperate climates at epochs 
not very far distant, geologically speaking, from the present time. 
It is now about twenty-five years since the Geological Survey 
of India, as constituted under the directorship of the late Dr. 
Oldham, commenced operations on the coal fields by exploring one 
which is situated in the native state of Talchir in the Province of 
Onisa. The officers so employed* were the first to discriminate a 
group of rocks which underlay the coal measures and from which 
they were found to be separable not only by very marked litho- 
logical characters, but also by an amount of more or less distinct 
unconformity. 
This group of rocks consisted of fine-grained, yellow, and greenish 
sandstones, green, blue,and yellow mud-stones or silts which latter, 
on exposure, became fractured into finely splintered fragments 
and one or more boulder beds of so remarkable a character as 
to excite the particular attention of the geologists who in their 
account which was published in the first Volume of the Memoirs 
of the Survey, described the bottom boulder bed as 
“Consisting essentially of boulders of granite and gneiss, those of the 
former comparatively small, and the latter of much larger size, frequently 
* Messrs. W. T. and H. F. Blanford and W. Theobald. 
