Chap. 2.] w. blanford, western india. 11 



will be found in the sequel. Another paper of Captain Abbott's m the 

 same volume of the Asiatic Society's Journal describes the clay of the 

 Nerbudda valley and some agate splinters contained in it, which he 

 shows must have undergone fractvu-e previously to being* imbedded {a). 



Neither Stirling nor Abbott appears to have been aware that 

 metamorphic and other rocks, lower than the traps, existed in the 

 Nerbudda valley at no great distance, both east and west of 

 Mvmdlaisur, and they were evidently unacquainted with Dangerfield's 

 researches. 



Dr. Malcolmson, about the same time, in the transactions of the 



Bombay Geographical Society (d) identified some 

 Malcolmsou, 1844. 



- specimens of Thysa, Lymnea, &c., collected by 

 Lieutenant Blake near Ghara at the foot of the Nalcha Ghat (N. W. of 

 Mundlaisur) with shells found by himself in the intertrappean beds of Berar 

 and Nagpoor, and he concludes that the Vindhyan mountains were elevated 

 during the same comparatively recent epoch as the Sichel, Gawilgurh and 

 Satpoora ranges. He then proceeds to point out the importance of this 

 determination with reference to Elie de Beaumont's theories concerning 

 the synchronism of parallel mountain chains (c). A large portion of 

 the paper is occupied by this discussion, and by remarks upon the 

 differences presented by the climate and fauna of the Indian plains 

 previously to the eruption of the traps and elevation of the mountain 

 chains. The remarks are most interesting, as are all the few pages 

 which their author has contributed to the elucidation of the geology of 

 India, but the data upon which they are mainly founded have since been 

 shown to be incorrect, and it is therefore unnecessary to do more than refer 

 to them. In a foot note (p. 372), Malcolmson very briefly refers to the 



(a). These may have heeii the remarkable flakes, almost certainly broken by human 

 agency, which abound in parts of the Nerbudda valley. 



(6). Vol. VI, p. 368. 



(e). For some important remarks by Mr. J. G. Medlicott on this theory, see these 

 Memoirs, Vol. II, pp. 254-263. 



( 173 ) 



