TREDIAN HILLS. 265 



nummulitie beds which forms their last undulation before passing 

 downwards at a steep angle beneath the plateau. The petroleum issues 

 out of a zone from 50 to 150 feet below *^the top of the lime rock" 

 according to Mr. Lyman ; but when I visited the place, it seemed to 

 spring from a position nearer to the uppermost layers of the limestone. 

 How deep-seated the sources might be, there were no means of deter- 

 mining. The oil is at first green, afterwards changing to black, and the 

 amount capable of being collected here from both localities was little 

 more than one gallon daily. The springs are situated at the edges of 

 the channels of the Chota and Bara Katta brooks, as they leave the 

 hills, and just where these hills rise steeply from the lower ground. 

 The oil-springs are so near the water — on which, indeed, much of the oil 

 floats — that when these streams are in flood the whole accumulation of it 

 is washed away. The oil does not issue by itself, but accompanied by 

 water, and the locality would be a good one for making trial borings, as 

 suggested by Mr. Lyman, though the existing springs are ill situated on 

 account of the loss occasioned by floods. (See fig. 53, Plate XXX.) 



The bed of the sandstone series which immediately succeeds the num- 

 mulitie limestone is itself calcareous and concretionary, containing a 

 few nummulites and bearing more or less resemblance to the pseudo- 

 conglomerate layers higher up in the series. 



Native sulphur was formerly collected at Jaba from gypseous clay- 

 deposits close in the vicinity of the petroleum springs, the water of 

 which is charged with sulphurous gases ; but when I visited the locality, 

 the places pointed out, on being dug into, yielded only microscopic grains 

 of a yellow mineral which might have been sulphur. The presence 

 of the sulphur here and the gypseous nature of the superficial clay 

 suo'gest the agency of sulphurous springs as a cause for the similarly 

 gypseous condition of the great clay mounds before mentioned along the 

 base of the hills north-by-west from this place. 



Between Khyrabad and Mari the older rocks form only low and not 



continuous hills along the margin of the plains, 

 Mari neighbourhood. , ^ ■ ,, u i -n p Ti/rr . , , " 



the largest being the salt-hiU of Man, and the 

 K a ( 265 ) 



