CiiAPTEH VI, — The Upper Vindhyans. 



The upper Vindhyans cover a much larger spread of country than 

 the lower. The latter, as has been seen, are overlapped near S^gar and 

 Jubbulpur, west of which they do not exist, and where they do exist 

 to the east, it is only at their outcrops from beneath the upper series 

 that they appear at the surface. Taken generally, the upper Vin- 

 dhyans are made up of several thick masses of sandstone with alter- 

 nations of shale, which in lithological characters frequently preserve a 

 remarkable imiformity over immense areas. At a distance of several 

 hundred miles, the same sub-division can often be recognised in an 

 instant by the peculiarities which distinguish, it elsewhere. The calca- 

 reous element is deficient, being only represented by a single limestone 

 of importance. Evidence of the shallowness of the depositing waters 

 is furnished by the presence of beautiful ripple-marking on the surface 

 of bed after bed for hundreds of feet in thickness, and in other cases by 

 the amount of false-bedding which distinguishes certain bands. With 

 the exception of certain obscure markings in the Bundair limestone, and 

 whicb are probably inorganic, no trace of fossils has hitherto been found 

 in the Vindhyans, whether upper or lower, a fact which has frequently 

 been alluded to with surprise by former explorers, who have remarked 

 the apparently highly favourable nature of the rocks for the pre- 

 servation of such memorials of former ages. 



The stratigraphy is very simple on the whole, the various bands 

 being spread out nearly horizontally over wide areas, and it is only in 

 a few special regions of disturbance that the geology is at all com- 

 plicated. Such are the upper part of the Nerbudda valley, where the 

 rocks are faulted, thrown up vertically, and even inverted ; the Dhar 

 forest ; and the northern boundary south-west of Agra. In the eastern 

 extension of the formation the strata are disposed in the form of a very 

 shallow basin, in consequence of which the highest members of the 

 series geographically occupy a central position and are surrounded in 



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