042 R. Bruce Foote—Stone Implements in Madras. 
cannot see the reason for separating the one from the other. All 
those which I found associated with serpentine appeared to be much 
more highly altered than would be likely in rocks of this age. 
Indeed, the condition of the admittedly Triassic rocks of the Enga- 
dine justifies us in assigning to all these schists a much greater 
antiquity than any part of the Mesozoic period. With our present 
knowledge extreme caution is doubtless required in drawing an in- 
ference as to the age of a rock from its state of metamorphism. At the 
same time all the evidence which we possess points to the conclusion 
that extensive regional metamorphism has only taken place in rocks 
of great geological age, and that the current statements about highly 
altered Secondary and even Tertiary rocks in the Alps are in many 
cases certainly erroneous, and in all need confirmation. Thus, in 
the case of these Alpine schists, which as a rule are more highly 
altered than any rock in Britain known to be of Cambrian or Post- 
Cambrian age, I should agree with some of the more modern Conti- 
nental geologists in regarding them as very old and possibly Pre- 
Cambrian. While then we may be quite certain of the origin of 
these serpentines, we have very wide possible limits for their geo- 
logic age. 
Tl].—Norres oN THE OccURRENCE OF SToNE IMPLEMENTS IN THE 
Coast Larerire, Sourn oF Mapras, anp IN HIGH-LEVEL 
GRAVELS AND OTHER FoRMATIONS IN THE SourH MawrattTa 
Country.! 
By R. Bruce Footz, F.G.S., Geological Survey of India. 
N June, 1868, I had the honour to read before the Geological 
Society of London a paper on the occurrence of Chipped Stone 
Implements in beds of conglomerate and in various non-compacted 
gravels belonging to the Lateritic Series, which fringes the greater 
part of the Peninsula of India. The district within which imple- 
ments had then been discovered in the coast laterite extended from 
the Palar river near Madras, nearly up to the Kistna river, but none 
from the country south of the former river, though it was surveyed 
as far south as 12° 15’” subsequently to the discovery of the imple- 
ments at Palavaram and Attrampakkam. Since then it has fallen to 
my lot to run over part of the lateritic beds north and south of the 
Cauvery delta, and I had the good fortune to find palzolithic imple- 
ments at several places in the Trichinopoly, Tanjore and Madura 
districts. 
The lateritic formations of the south, like those occurring further 
north, form a widely-spread but thin series of conglomerates, gravels 
and sands, divided by the existing rivers into a number of irregular 
patches overlying the older rocks, whether gneissic, Cretaceous or 
Tertiary, and dipping themselves under the marine and fluviatile 
alluvia which fringe the coast. They have been extensively denuded, 
particularly along their western boundary; outliers of them being, 
traceable many miles to the west of the present boundary. 
* This paper has, since the original was read at the British Association, Swansea, 
been in part re-written, and some additional matter of interest has been added to it. 
