28 CRETACEOUS ROCKS OF S. INDIA. [PaRT II. § 1. 



the late Mr. Adolphe Sclilagiatweit, whose visit was of the briefest, the 

 Revd. Dr. Muzzy of Madura is, so far as I am aware, the only Geologist 

 who has travelled over the coimtiy I am about to describe, aad his 

 observations, however valuable, were almost necessarily fragmentary, his 

 attention having been directed to the Mineralogy and Petrology of 

 the district, rather than to the elucidation of its Geological structure. The 

 sedimentary rocks of Trichinopoly have thus remained comparatively 

 unknown, and it was by no means anticipated that a detailed survey of 

 the district in question would disclose an extensive series of deposits 

 ranging with but slightly interrupted sequence through the whole of the 

 upper Cretaceous epoch, and abounding in the exuviae of three successive 

 faunas. 

 The evidence of the Geographical conditions of this portion of Southern 

 Physical Geography of ^^^^^ during the Cretaceous period is, indeed, very 

 the Cretaceous period. complete ; with the single exception of a dislocation 



of some of the older beds at one point near Ootatoor, the whole series of 

 the sedimentary rocks rests almost in the original planes of deposition. 

 That the sea in which they were formed was comparatively shallow, there 

 is, as I shall presently show, abundant evidence, both lithological and 

 palseontological, to prove, and in the lofty hills which rise at a short 

 distance from the present edge of the denuded Cretaceous rocks, we have 

 the land which, after making allowance for much denudation, can scarcely 

 have changed greatly in general form, since it towered up from the bosom 

 of the Cretaceous sea. On this land, probably, grew the Zamias and other 

 plants, the remains of which occur so abundantly in the lowest beds of 

 the stratified rocks and hence, or from the corresponding hills in Madura 

 to the South of the Cauvery Valley, was floated the fossil wood Avhich, some- 

 times sound and intact, sometimes bored through by the Teredo, abounds 

 in certain beds throughout the series. From these and the surrounding 

 hills too, and from a part of the low country at their foot, were derived 

 the sand, clay, and conglomerate of which these Cretaceous rocks are built 



