MIDNAPORE, OEISSA, &C. 273 



In the central and southern divisions of Orissa, " laterite" covers a very 



. „ . ^^i"g6 area. In the northern part of the province 



Laterite in Onssa. . _ ' 



it occurs in a compact form only along the base of 



the Nilghiri hills, which it generally but not invariably skirts, and from 



the base of which it in many places extends for from half a mile to a 



• mile into the plains. But around Balasore a peculiar gravelly variety 



of this singular rock appears forming a bed some five or six feet thick, 



and at a short distance beneath the surface of the ground. This bed 



occurs in a tract of undulating alluvium, and is not compact as near the 



hills, but gravelly and sandy, consisting mainly of ferruginous pisiform 



nodules, and having generally the appearance of a bed reconstituted from 



denuded " laterite." It does not follow that this has been its origin, but 



it presents that appearance. This does not extend far to the south, and 



it dies away also towards the hills. Further to the south, it occasionally 



recurs, generally in the dry, gravelly and kunkuriferous soils of the older 



alluvium; but it is also sometimes found in alluvium quite undistin- 



guishable from the recent delta deposits, as, for example, at the village of 



Teelochuudpur, close to the river Kursooa, the northern branch of the 



river Brahmini, and just to the west of the Cuttack road. 



South of the Brahmini, and thence to the Chilka Lake, laterite forms 



a raised terrace-like plain around nearly all the 

 Terrace-like plain. . 



hills, excepting those iew which occur far out m 



the alluvium. It sometimes stretches across from hill to hill, and is 

 covered by alluvium in the hollows, in which it evidently ill many cases 

 underlies the more recent deposits. Indeed it probably underlies the 

 whole of the recent alluvium, and seems to have covered the country up 

 to a certain height, as if the undulating surface of the region to a cer- 

 tain altitude had been converted into this singular ferruginous formation. 

 It is seldom seen above this altitude, and its level dips rapidly towards 

 the East, so that the area it covers around the more easterly hills 

 becomes more and more circumscribed, until at length in the isolat- 

 ed peaks far east of the main clusters, no laterite at all appears, and 



