183 w. blAnfoed, western india. [Part II. 



thickness of about 500 feet below the upper flat : only a portion of these 

 are due to the ordinary basaltic lava flows ; the remainder consist of a 

 peculiar lig-ht purple ar^llaceous rock, rare elsewhere. It has a some- 

 what cherty appearance, and generally contains small crystals of glassy 

 felspar : this rock is sometimes mottled, purple and grey ; it is almost 

 always distinctly marked by planes of lamination, parallel to the strati- 

 fication, and sometimes so finely so as to resemble an ordinary shale more 

 than a volcanic root ; yet these beds occasionally appear to pass into 

 basaltic trap, and one form of basalt, that containing crystals of glassy 

 felspar, weathers, at the edges of blocks, into a substance closely 

 resembling the purplish shaley rock just described. 



It is not easy to explain the formation of such beds. Frequently 

 they have the appearance of volcanic ash, but, on the other hand, their 

 highly laminated structure appears due to deposition in water ; yet it is in 

 places irregular, and the beds contain pumice, which could hardly be 

 expected to occur in subaqueous formations. There is a possibihty of 

 these rocks having been flows of volcanic mud of great tenuity, or their 

 peculiar character may, in part at least, be due to changes subsequent 

 to their consolidation. Similar beds are very rare amongst the traps, and 

 no other instance of their development on an equally extensive scale 

 elsewhere has as yet been observed in Western India. 



Section 13. — Akranee and Kantee, or Parvee ; erom Toorun Mul 



ON THE EAST TO THE WESTERN WATERSHED OE THE DeVA RIVER ON THE 

 WEST, AND EEOM THE NeRBUDDA TO THE NORTHERN BOUNDARY OF 



Khandeish. 



With the exception of a small patch of sandstone and shale 



General distribution of towards its western extremity in the valley of the 



''*^'^^^* Deva, the. section of country now to be described 



consists entirely of trap. The country is a mass of hills, many of them 



of considerable height. 



( 344 ) 



