232 FOOTE : SOUTH MAHRATTA. COUNTRY. 



able surface in that corner of the Kaladgi basin. This lake or another 

 of similar character occupied the valley of the Bunknuree nullah 

 immediately to the west. 



No organic remains were found in any of these supposed lacus- 

 trine formations, and this appears the greatest objection to the hypo- 

 thesis of the lake basins in question, but the shape of the country and posi- 

 tion of the shingle and iron mud deposits are all in favour of the hypothesis, 

 for it explains the presence of these deposits in many places where they 

 could not be referred to subaerial changes of ferruginous rocks, as, for 

 example, where the laterite rests directly on unaltered quartzite. 



3. — Ossiferous Deposits. 



The formation which yielded the fossil mammalian and molluscan 

 remains lies within the area occupied by the recent alluvium deposited 

 by the Ghatprabha river along a lake-like reach* extending some 11 

 miles north-eastward from the town of Gokak. The most recently 

 deposited alluvium consists of a bed of black clay formed of washed up 

 regur of considerable thickness, and this is underlaid by the ossiferous 

 beds consisting of dark brownish black stiff clays with partings and 

 thin beds of gritty or sandy clay. Only one section was found in which 

 the ossiferous beds were exposed, and this occurs in the banks of the 

 small nullah flowing into the Ghatprabha at Chikdauli (Cheekdowleh) 

 three miles east-north-east of Gokak. Of the mammalia here discovered 

 the most interesting was an extinct species of Rhinoceros which I found 

 in 1S71 and described and figured in Part I of Series X of the ^Palseon- 

 tologia Indica'' under the name of Rh. Beccanensis. 



* Described further on at page 235. 



All the fossils were found in a reach of the Chikdauli nullah rises in the hills north- 

 west of Banichimardi (Buneechmurdee) but not, as represented in Sheet 41, in the hills south 

 of Kelvi. 



The true Kelvi nullah as already shown (page ) joins the great Mamdapur nullah 

 TJparhatti. 



( 232 ) 



