82 HUGHES : WARDHA VALLEY COAL-FIELD. 



1871 described rocks that cropped out in the River Wardha near Porsa,* 

 and which he distinguished as a series differing from the Kamthis. He 

 also pointed out the likelihood of their association with the Malexi beds 

 to the south in which numerous remains of the very curious and inter- 

 esting Hyper odapedon, Parasuchus, besides teeth of Ceratodus, and some 

 undetermined fragments occur. 



This surmise has been confirmed ; and in addition the remarkable 

 beds near Kota on the Pranhita, which have yielded several well-marked 

 fish remains, considered Liassic in their relations, have been determined 

 to be members of the same group. 



In designating the beds thus associated as the Kota-Maleri 

 group, two well-known names have been selected — a circumstance which 

 it is considered will better sustain the interest in the literary associations 

 connected with the beds than the choice of another name would have 

 done. 



The fossiliferous areas of Kota and Maleri are both beyond the 

 limits of the Wardha Valley, and therefore I shall only allude to them 

 and to one or two other localities to the extent necessary to make my 

 remarks upon the chronological relations of the group clear. 



The following is the description of the lithological and petrologieal 

 features of the group. The most distinctive petrologieal feature they 

 present is the abundance of red and green clays and argillaceous sand- 

 stones, and it is the occurrence of these rocks at the horizon they occupy 

 that reminds us of somewhat similar conditions existing in the Bengal 

 coal-fields, where above a mass of sandstones (Raniganj) — which, how- 

 ever, were coal-bearing — a series of red and green clays and associated 

 sandstones (Panchet) succeeds, just as red and green clays and associated 

 sandstones here follow the Kamthis. The clays might well be Panchets, 

 but among the sandstones there is an entire absence of any like the soft 



* On the Chanda and Sir6ncha road, opposite Sirptir (Nizam's Dominions) and6 miles 

 from Dabha. 



( H2 ) 



