CHAP. 2.] KARNÜL FORMATION.—PANEUM GROUP. 61 
above and west of Owk) in east-west and north-south directions, but 
mainly east-west, and this may account for the quicker denudation; but 
it is hard to conceive how the great mass could have been so cleanly 
removed from such extensive surfaces of the thinner and less hard under- 
lying beds without an equally advancing destruction of these. It seems 
preferable to look on this absence of pinnacled beds from the terraces 
as being mainly due to their having thinned out over them, and probably 
never having existed at all on the further outlying flat-topped hills 
which are only capped with the lower beds. On the other hand, it is 
worthy of notice that the flat-topped hills north-west of Banaganpilly 
are many of them only capped with pinnacled beds, while the more 
easterly of these have caps of the lower beds. This last ties in with 
the thinning-out of the group at Kypaw, and for some distance north 
of that village. 
The peculiar manner in which the pinnacled beds have been 
Denudationand weather. denuded and weathered is very well seen in many 
ee Dy e heds, places all over the field of these rocks, but best 
where there is a good superficial show. The slopes of all the hills about 
the area of the Paneum dome are strewn with more or less cubical masses 
of the fallen quartzites of every size, up to huge fragments of 20 to 40 feet 
cube, which have become detached- from the scarp, and have either re- 
mained resting on the slopes or lie scattered about over the plains below. 
The three views here given, Plates II and III, are partly illustrative of the 
block-strewn slopes of most of the hills north-west of Banaganpilly, &c. 
The sketch No. 1 , (Pl. ID), embracing, as it does, a good part of the eastern 
half of the Oopalpad plateau, only shows the strewn blocks very minutely. 
Along the scarps where this member of the group is alone developed, 
and the denuding forces have cut well down into the underlying shales 
and limestones, the buttressed and pinnacled form of weathering does 
not show so well. Under such circumstances, the great buttresses of 
rock have generally become detached, and there is very little of clear 
( 61 ) 
