282 KING: KADAPAH AND KARNÜL FORMATIONS. [PART IV. 
variety of limestone coming very nearly up to the ordinary specific 
gravity of gneiss. Water-carriage will of course reduce this cost. 
The limestones where they are at hand have been largely used by the 
people of the country, the larger villages in the 
Khoond-air valley having their better houses built 
of well-selected and dressed Nerjee beds; while the wells of the 
Cuddapah and of this valley are all lined with this stone.* 
Limestone. 
There are then the serpentinous varieties of limestone, many of 
which are excessively ornamental, but which will 
Serpentine. 5 ۱ E 
of course not come into use until a desire for 
ornamental stone-work is created in the country, and a cheap means 
of transport ready at hand. 
Lime is easily procured all over the district, more generally from 
RN the kunkur deposits, of which there are many 
in the alluvial flats and underneath the spreads 
of cotton soil. The pure and more erystalhne grey and pale colored 
varieties of the different limestones are, however, now coming into use 
in this way, a resource for lime which has been mainly developed by 
the railway and canal engineers. At Culloor near Kurnool the pale 
splintery limestone 1s largely burnt. 
Some of the limestones are very well colored, particularly in the 
aba Palnéd;+ and there are the variously colored 
breccia beds in the western scarps of Jummul- 
mudgoos and the bottom of the slates in the Chey-air field, all of which 
would give very handsome marbles were such to come into demand. 
* It is absolutely necessary to line the wells here, for the most of them are first 
sunk through the purple Nundial shales, which often in their decomposition completely 
spoil the water. 
+ Mr. J. Rhode, the late Inspector-General of Prisons in Madras, who was at the 
time Judge at Guntoor and took a great interest in the rocks of the Palnad, had small slabs 
of nearly every variety of these limestones cut and polished, many of which are now n 
the Madras Central Government Museum and are highly ornamental marbles. 
( 282 ) 
