1921.] The Highth Indian Science Congress. elxxxix 
establishing all sorts of fanciful parallelism between the Indian 
formations and the economically productive horizons of 
England and other parts of the world. Their disappointed 
expectations and the barrenness of such search, combined 
with the absence of the usual geological land-marks such as 
one is accustomed to in Western Europe, produced as their 
result an undeserved aversion towards all kind cf geological 
pursuits in India in the minds of their successors—a set-back 
from which Indian geology has not yet recovered. To the 
unselfish lover of pure science, in pursuit of purely scientific 
data, the imperfect and fragmentary nature of the stratified 
record as preserved in India has caused repulsion in another 
way. The disconcerting geological antithesis presented by 
the two natural divisions of India the Indo-gangetic alluvial 
terra in recording only the latest chapter of geological history ; 
and the most important areas of the Peninsula lving under the 
undecipherable records of its earliest chapters,—the two 
neglected extremes of geological history of those days, 
detracted all interest and zeal of the seeker after ciphiteti 4 
ther 
annals of Europe. The unrelieved monotony of these deposits 
purposes, for fossils were then considered to be the only 
alphabet of geological knowledge and the modern more re 
though less certain, methods of the study of sediments had 
not come into vogue. 
While these causes account for the inattention of the man 
7 of science _ general 
pe said paces geological investigation in India, and tend 
oe 
amount of ground covered and that which remains to be gone 
over, the indifference of the educated classes of the people of 
India towards geology is also easily accountable. The lack of 
variety in topographic relief over vast stretches of the country 
and of rapidly alternating geological features from district, 
to district, which first arouse curiosity in the minds of the 
more intelligent among the population and attract them to 
the scientific study of earth-features, have been sufficient 
causes to bring about this sterility of knowledge. A weary 
uniformity and monotony in any group 0 phenomena, do not 
furnish the proper medium in which the germs of new know- 
