On Floating Ice in India. 433 
From the character of the strize on the rock surface it was con- 
cluded that the movement, supposing there to have been no 
subsequent shifting of levels, had been up the slope—the ice-raft, 
which it was concluded bore the boulders, having drifted against 
the rock and been impelled forwards. 
As the surface at present stands the nearest locality, judging 
by the Geological Map, from which the syenite boulder might have 
been derived, lies thirty to forty miles to the East where crystal- 
line rocks are indicated at a lower level—the rivers now flowing in 
that direction. Since, however, the nearly adjacent country to the 
west is covered by the Tertiary, Dekan trap, it is impossible to 
assert in what direction the original source may have been, and 
regarding this point Mr. Fedden makes no suggestion. 
In quite a different part of the country—in Western Bengal—I 
have met with what, so far as the rocks are concerned, is quite 
the converse. ‘There in two distinct coal fields, I have found 
boulders of a Vindhyan quartzite mixed with others of gneiss 
granite, &e., resting on beds of gneiss. So far as is at present 
known the nearest possible source for these is from fifty to eighty 
miles distant respectively, and it is likewise situated at a lower 
level—a very rough and broken country, through which the 
rivers traverse many a rocky defile, intervening. 
Such cases as the above clearly cannot be explained by river* 
transport, the movements of mud or of turf, while the suppositions 
that the beds are merely marginal or that the silt was deposited 
on an already boulder strewn surface are also incapable of aftord- 
ing an adequate explanation. 
One very remarkable fact about the Talchir rocks is that they 
constitute the oldest formation in Peninsular India in which any 
trace of life has been met with. The great Vindhyan series to 
which allusion has been made above, with its vast thicknesses of 
sandstone and limestone has not, in spite of unremitting search, 
* The effect of modern rivers is to erode out and isolate these boulders, a remarkable 
instance of which I have noted in the Goinghatta river in Sirguja where “In several 
of the reaches a peculiar effect is produced by the gneiss boulders which have been 
washed out of the boulder bed and are scattered about on the surface, as though they had 
been only just dropped from floating ice. One boulder still iz situ in the bed gave the 
following dimensions 7’ 4'' x 6! 8 x 2' = 97 cubic feet and I observed several 
others, which could not be measured, which were still larger.” Record Geol. Survey, 
of India. Vol. VI. p. 29. 
Scien. Proc., R.D.S. Vou. 11., Pt. vi. 2G 
