CUTCH, — APPENDIX. 21 



still left undecided. lu any case Mr. Blanford thinks it clear that if 

 not intercalated, they are younger than these Dogger* beds. This being 

 established, it follows as a matter of course that the argument as to 

 their probable age, based on Captain Grant's descriptions, fails, and that 

 the relations of these beds in Ciiteh prove (not, as argued by me in 1860, 

 that the plaut beds were ''not more recent than the lower oolite,'' but) 

 that these beds are not older than the lower oolite. This is an import- 

 ant step. 



The identity of the distinctive and most abundant fossils of the 

 Rajmahal group of Bengal with those occurring in these beds in Cutch 

 was shown so long since as 1854t and again in 1860, and the necessity 

 \ for at once admitting the same age for both established. Nothing 

 whatever to invalidate this has been since discovered, and whatever 

 geological horizon be established for the beds with plants and coal 

 in Cutch must be admitted also for the Rajmahal series of Bengal. This 

 was then (1860) shown to be decidedly pre-cretaceous, and now it is shown 

 to be, if not really lower Jurassic, at least not older than the lower oolite. 

 I am not aware that any writer has viewed them as other than Jurassic. 



Mr. Blanford (p. 2) refers to the beds in the Nerbudda valley at first 

 supposed to be equivalents of the Rajmahal beds of Bengal and Madras. 

 There is strong reason for thinking that this supposed equivalence is 

 not supported by the fossils. It was never strongly insisted on ; it was 

 said that these beds contained " many forms not represented in the 

 Rajmahal group/' and with similarity in several, identity of only one 

 was stated. { Our specimens are few, and many not very well preserved, 

 and until further research has been undertaken in the Jubbulpoor country, 

 I cannot admit, as established, the equivalence of the Jubbulpoor beds 

 with the typical ^ Rajmahal' group. 



Since the publication of my sketch of the ' geological relations of 

 the rock systems of Central India and Bengal' in 1860, the occurrence 



* Mem. Geol. Survey, India, II, 322, 



t Jour. As. Soc, Bengal, XXIII, 272, 1854 



J Mem. Geol. Sm-vey, India, II, 324. 



( 37 ) 



