UPPER GONDWANA SERIES. 57 



place; and in a well-section close to south of the road which leads 

 from the trunk road to the sea at Voolapalem, a section of purple and 

 white mottled gritty shales, some 12 feet thick, may be seen. No 

 distinct traces of plants could be made out in either locality ; but the 

 shales have a very strong 1 resemblance to other unmistakably Rajmahal 

 beds, as, for example, those of which traces in the lateritic gravel, 

 at and to the south of the village of Razpalem, were referred to above, 

 page 53. 



The one member of the Kandukur group of patches of Rajmahal beds 



lying northward of the Paleru occurs a mile east- 

 Ilavara patch. , „_, ,„■■■, \ -> « -i ,i ,, 



ward of Ilavara (Yellavurra), 10 miles north-north- 

 west of Kandukur. Here, in the bed of the large nullah flowing east- 

 ward into the Musi river, and in several small gullies opening into it from 

 the south, are to be seen beds of micaceous sandstone overlaid by grits 

 and shales with clayey bands, all dipping southward at angles varying 

 from 5° to 10°, or else rolling about. Another similar series of sandstones 

 and shales, apparently underlying the above-mentioned beds, occur on the 

 northern bank of the nullah, and on the banks of a small tributary 

 from the north. One bed of sandstone low down in the series, exposed 

 in the gully immediately west of the little hamlet of Netivaripolem (not 

 shown in the map), contains a few rather large but much weathered 

 boulders of gneiss, reminding one of the boulders so common in some of 

 the beds at the base of the plant-bearing series in Trichinopoly district. 

 In the bed of the large nullah a little east of the boulder bed the sand- 

 stones are very coarse and gritty ; they roll about a good deal, but the 

 general dip is low south-south-westerly. The shaly beds in the more 

 westerly gullies yielded a very few plant remains of the most frag- 

 mentary kind, but only after long-continued search. The most recog- 

 nisable specimen seemed to be part of the mid-rib of a Ptilop/iyllum frond. 

 This small patch of plant beds appears to owe its continuance to the fact 

 that it is sunk in a depression in the gneiss, and has therefore escaped 

 the full force of the erosive agencies which have so greatly affected the 

 Rajmahal beds over a large part of this particular region. 



( 57 ) 



