CHAPTER IX. 



TEE EATnIgIEI PLANT BEDS. 



Resting upon the denuded surface of the Deccan trap on the 

 coast of the Konkan at Ratnagiri is a bed of white clay containing the 

 remains of plants, partly converted into lignite, — which there is good 

 reason to regard as the representatives of the lignitiferous beds dis- 

 covered in Travancore State by the late Lieutenant- General Cullen. 

 The grounds on which the two formations are viewed as contempora- 

 neous are the similarity of geographical position, and the similarity, if 

 not identity, of the lignites and fossil resins found in both places. 



The Travancore lignite beds underlie the local laterite which 

 General Cullen considered to be a rock formed of the detritus of the 

 metamorphie rocks forming the Southern Ghats — an opinion that is con- 

 firmed by my having myself found laterite at Cottayam in Travancore 

 which was a true clayey conglomerate. 



The Ratnagiri beds are described by Mr. C. J. Wilkinson, late of 

 the Geological Survey of India, in his Sketch of the Geological Structure 

 of the Southern Konkan,"^ as ''a thickness of a few feet of white 

 clay^* seen resting " on the trap in well and other sections," " imbedding 

 fruits and containing thin carbonaceous seams composed for. the most 

 part of leaves/^ He adds — "This is separated from, the soft laterite 

 above by a ferruginous band about an inch thick, having much the 

 appearance of haematite. It is vesicular, the cavities being filled by 

 quartz, &c." 



Dr. Carter, by whom these Ratnagiri clays were considered to be 

 identical with the Travancore beds, mentions in his Summary of the 

 Geology of Indiaf that blue clay has also been found at Ratnagiri. 



* Records of the Geological Survey of India, "Vol. IV, pt. 2, 1871, p. 44. - 

 t Published in the Geological papers on Western India, Bombay, 1857, p. 722, note. 

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