MALLET;, VINDHYAN SERIES. Ill 



outlets as there arc gorges. The production of the latter in their com- 

 mencement, until the slope in question was cut through and the rivers 

 in a position subsequently to finish them, might also be attributed to 

 marine action^"^ but besides complicating the affair by the introduction 

 of both marine and sub-aerial forces at different epochs, there are at least 

 two objections to the marine part of it. The Kymore range to the south 

 would have been exposed to the same action, and if the gorges in question 

 were partially marine, we should expect to find oceanic gorges through 

 it also, but none such exist. Further, every gorge of those we are dis- 

 cussing is now the path of a river, while we might naturally expect to 

 find some which were not so, if they were produced in a way unconnected 

 with the present drainage. The only remaining explanation is, that the 

 gorges are due entirely to sub -aerial causes, and that when they were 

 commenced, the lower Bundair area generally was from one to two 

 hundred feet higher than it is now, this amount having been subsequently 

 sub-aerially denuded. If then so much has been effected in this way, 

 is it not simpler to suppose that the whole denudation, from 500 to 800 

 or 900 feet, has been effected in a similar manner, than to bring in marine 

 denudation to do part of a work, a considerable portion of which was 

 done by sub-aerial denudation ? If the latter could remove 200 feet of 

 strata, it could remove 800. If it carried away the lower 200 feet, it 

 must have formed so much of the base of the Bundair escarpment. And 

 if a marine scarp had been previously in existence, the sub-aerial forces 

 must, (unless they chanced all along its entire length to eat exactly up 

 to its base, neither more nor less,) either have left in places a second, 

 outer, escarpment, which they have not done ; or else they must have cut 

 back the marine escarpment more or less, which would prove that they 

 had the power of forming such an escarpment themselves. If the scarp 

 again were marine, the Vindhyan area must have been submerged since 



* The production of such a gorge open at both ends would, of course, be essentially 

 different from that of a ml de sac like the complete gorge. 



( 111 ) 



