254 FOOTE : SOUTH MAHEATTA COUNTRY. 



branch of the Baichubal nala. Guineaworm was exceedingly com- 

 mon at this village, so much so that my servants (Madrassees) got 

 frightened and requested to be allowed to move camp to some other 

 village. Whether this was merely accidental, or whether the quality 

 of the water favored the development of the parasitical worm, is a 

 question that may interest naturalists devoted to the study of the 

 entozoa. 



With regard to the soils occurring in the central and eastern parts 

 of the Bhima basin, Mr. King writes as follows in his notes : — 



" The trap country is generally covered, except in proximity with 

 the more clayey, vesicular, and zeolitic traps, by 

 the dark brown, nearly black soil, so closely re- 

 sembling cotton soil in appearance. This deposit is, unlike the cotton 

 soil of Southern India, evidently due in great measure to the decompo- 

 sition of the rocks either beneath it or in its immediate neighbourhood. 

 It is ferruginous and is in many instances seen to pass down gradually 

 into a brown or red clayey and somewhat ferruginous stony covering or 

 form of the trap itself. It is also full of small fragments of trap. 

 Such a soil may be well seen over the country south of Gulbarga towards 

 Parwattabad, and beyond this where the trap borders either bank of the 

 Ferozabad zigzag reaches of the Bhima. 



'^A brownish black and grey soil such as extends southward 



from Gulbarga past Rajahpur is occasionally 



seen. This is glittering at times with large and 



small particles of a silvery white zeolite (? Scolecite). The same kind 



of soil may be seen all over the country to the north-east of Gulbarga 



wherever denudation has cut down through the higher plateaux of 



black basaltic trap of that region, to the intermediate beds of grey or 



brown vesicular and amygdaloidal traps, which are at about the same 



level as the low grounds south of Gulbarga town, as in the valleys of 



the Benathora and Mulamari rivers. 



( 354 ) 



