PREFACE. 



When the Staff of the Geological Survey of India was increased in 

 1856, and its labours systematized, and extended to the Presidency of 

 Madras, under the sanction of the Right Hon'ble the Governor General 

 of India in Council, it was also ordered that the reports on different 

 districts, examined geologically by its officers, should be published 

 in one continuous and uniform series, not as previously in various jour- 

 nals, and in different forms. The present volume constitutes the first 

 of the series. 



As will be seen by a reference to its pages, it contains reports on 

 various districts, for the most part descriptive of the local geology of 

 the portions of the country examined, and illustrated by maps and 

 sections. The maps given in this volume (as will also be the case in 

 succeeding parts) are, in the majority of instances, on the same scale as 

 has been adopted for the Indian Atlas, namely, foui- British miles to 

 one inch. In cases where a very large area is covered uninterruptedly 

 by the same rocks, and no details of interest occm-, (as in the case of 

 the extensive alluvial, and laterite plains of Orissa and Midnapore in the 

 present volume,) a smaller scale is necessarily adopted. Such sections 

 as are required to shew the structural relations of the various groups 

 of rocks are also given. Figures and descriptions of important fossils 

 will be given from time to time. And, when sufficient data have been 

 accumulated, general abstracts of the results, embracing large areas, 

 will be compiled. 



The " Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India" will not, however, 

 be confined to purely descriptive papers. From time to time such 



