SYNOPSIS OP PREVIOUS OBSERVATIONS. 85 



With regard to the Decean Trap^ he considers on the authority 

 of Captain (late Colonel) Meadows Taylor that there are large tracts of 

 trap mud, including blocks and nodules of basalt, on the south-east 

 boundary of the trap area between the Bhima and Krishna rivers ; such 

 flows belong to the second series of his Trappean system — a conclusion 

 based on theoretical considerations only, and opposed to the real facts 

 of the case, which are simply this, that the flows have been largely 

 changed by weathering into an earthy mass, from the surface of which 

 the yet unweathered basaltic nuclei protrude. 



With regard to the laterite or iron-clay capping the trap rocks, 

 Mr. Carter is favorable to Dr. Yoysey's idea of its being a product of 

 decomposition in situ. He does not, however, draw any distinction 

 between the high-level laterite (iron-clay) in the Decean, and the low 

 level laterites of the Konkan, despite the immense difference in altitude 

 between their respective positions; indeed he considers the Ratnagiri 

 laterite also to be a true decomposed trap, not a detrital rock like the 

 laterite of TraVancore. 



The blue clay underlying the low-level laterite at Ratnagiri, he con- 

 siders identical with the eocene beds discovered by General Cullen; this 

 conclusion is based on the similarity of situation relatively to the general 

 configuration of the coast, and upon lithological identity of the blue 

 clays and enclosed lignites and resins. 



The theory of the trappean origin of the regur, or black soil,^ 

 which he most strongly advocates, is not supported by, if not indeed 

 positively opposed by, the circumstances under which the regur occurs, 

 not only in the South Mahratta Country, but throughout the southern 

 half of the Peninsula. 



In 1855 a general geological sketch map of India compiled from 



Greenough's Geological various sourccs by George Bellas Greenough, a 



ap o 11 la, . distinguished Fellow of the Geological Society of 



London, was published by his literary executors, in memoriam as it were 



E ( 33 ) 



