50 



FOOTE : SOUTH MAHRATTA COUNTRY. 



to be merely a product of a locally more intense metamorphic action^ such 

 as much of the granitoid gneiss unquestionably is. 



Dark-green colored chloritic beds are also frequently met with, but 

 they are less common and certainly much less conspicuous than the 

 beautiful pale green variety. 



The chloritic schist tracts are characterized by the absence of all 

 hills of any size or elevation, but are much cut up on a small scale by 

 water-coui'ses. 



The hasmatitic schists are a series of often richly ferruginous silicious 



schists which take in this part of the Peninsula 



Haematite schists. 



the place that is occupied by the magnetic iron 



beds of the Salem, Trichinopoly, South Arcot, and Coimbatoor Districts 



further south, and, like these latter, from their greater hardness, frequently 



form conspicuous features in the landscape, rising into long, rocky 



ridges of considerable height and mass. The silicious laminae of the 



rock are generally very fine-grained and often as semi-vitreous in texture 



^ , as true quartzites. Their color varies from nearly 



Color and texture. 



white to bright red or even dull brownish-purple. 



The true foliation or bedding of the rock is almost invariably perfectly 

 preserved. The amount of iron in the form of rich red haematite varies 

 very much in different parts of the same bed even ; a feature which is 

 characteristic also of the magnetic iron beds of the south. In rich parts 

 of the beds the ferruginous laminae are entirely composed of the haematite, 

 but in poorer parts the haematite contains many silicious particles, which 

 increase in number, and finally, in the poorest varieties of the schist, 

 predominate, so that the haematite appears merely as included grains. 

 Occasionally the iron-ore disappears entirely, and for considerable distances 

 the bed is then nothing else than a very finely laminated silicious schist 

 of jaspideous texture, often approaching closely to fine quartzite in ap- 

 pearance. In some beds the silicious laminae are all or in part stained 

 red in varying degrees of intensity, ranging from pinkish to almost pure 

 ( 50 ) 



