[part I. 



Chapter III. — Relations between the form op the ground and its 



GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE. 



Owing to the absence of jungle and the rapidity with which the 

 rochs of this country yield, each in its own peculiar manner, to the 

 action of the atmosphere, the broad relations between the form of the 

 aground and its structure are more obvious than usual. 



The strong calcareous beds alternating with soft earthy shales and 

 Alternation of beds easily abraded saline sandstones of the northern 

 an enu ation. ^j^^ ^^ ^-^^ province, undulating over the ground 



— tilted at low angles inclining' to the southward — or bent into long 

 anticlinal curves, have determined all the principal forms of the sur- 

 face under erosive influences slowly but continuously acting. Long 

 gentle slopes coincide with the inclinations of the beds; and abrupt 

 escarpments and declivities mark the places where the tendency of 

 all stratified rocks to divide along planes, vertical to their stratification, 

 has caused them to give way most to the wasting atmospheric agencies. 



Almost every change in the bedding of the rocks is accompanied by 

 alteration of the form of the ground j and where these relations are dis- 

 turbed by the occurrence of intrusive igneous rocks, at least to any consi- 

 derable extent, difference of texture has likewise produced variety of form. 



These results are so great and so well marked that it seems at 

 first sight difficult to reconcile them with the 

 ° ' existing state of things, the rain-fall of Kutch 

 beiuo- very limited; but then the materials upon which it acts 

 are fragile. Some of the earthy shales baked by the sun so as to 

 o-'we a sharp splintery fracture separate at once in water into unctu- 

 ous mud; calcareous and trappean rocks are always strongly influ- 

 enced by the weather ; and the winds, which seldom rest in Kutch, 

 no doubt play an important part in disintegrating the soft felspathic 



( 23 ) 



