252 FOOTE : SOUTH MAHRATTA COUNTRY. 



Ghats_, the red and brown soils, formed by direct decomposition of the 

 basalts and amygdaloids, increase greatly in quantity, and the black 

 regur soils are seen as a rule only in hollows, or valley bottoms. 



In the Ghdt region itself this phenomenon is yet more strikingly, 



Red soil prevalent in developed, and black soil becomes quite a rarity. 



the <Jhat region. Even the alluvia are reddish yellow or mottled 



clays, except after long-continued cultivation. Finally, on the high 



ranges, black soils are seen to form only in small swampy patches, covered 



with coarse tussocky grass. These black swamp 



Black swamp soil. i • , • i i 



soils are much more akm to a rich humus with 



peaty characters than to ordinary regur. Not a trace of real peat was, 



however, seen anywhere, though very carefully 



' looked for ; and the absence of it may, with good 



reason, be ascribed to the insuiBcient elevation of the mountains, for the 



climate is, in point of wetness, far better suited for the production of 



peat than many of the drier but more elevated mountains further south 



in the Peninsula, — e. g., the Shervaroy hills, where peat forms largely 



at an elevation above 4,000 feet. In the Wynad, peat forms at even 



much lower levels, but there the gneissic rocks may yield more suitable 



materials for the inorganic part of peat swamps. 



Amongst the exceptional forms of soil named at the beginning of 

 Greenish grey trap *^^^ chapter as not conveniently referable to either 

 ^°^^' of the great classes of the red and black soils, are 



the pure sands derived from decomposition of some of the quartzite and 

 grit beds of the Kaladgi and Bhima series, and also the grey, or drab, or 

 very pale olive green soils derived from the final decomposition of the 

 earthy weathering basalt, or " wacke " of German geologists. This 

 pale-colored half-sandy soil occurs largely in the trappean country, 

 especially among the lower flows in the more eastern part of the area. 

 This form of weathering seems almost as characteristic of basaltic rocks in 

 the dry portion of the Decean as the lateritoid weathering is in the 

 mountain region. 

 ( 252 ) 



