THE TRANSITION SERIES. 39 



plateau-form, the dip being inward from the edges of the range, 

 In the neighbourhood though there is much undulation in places. The 

 of Kalahasti. rocks are more generally grey and buff thick- 



bedded compact quartzite sandstones and conglomerates. In the Kala- 

 hasti ridge and the neighbouring Batanaik Konda the lie of the strata is 

 not so easy, the undulations in the latter being intensified to the north 

 until there are fair indications of a squeezed and then faulted arrange- 

 ment of the beds at Kalahasti, where in the small hill (250 feet high) 

 to the north of the town, false bedded altered conglomerates and sand- 

 stones are faulted against the gneiss. To the north of this hill no rock 

 is seen for some 7 miles until the north bank of the Swarnamukhi 

 is reached, when there crops up a narrow somewhat curved strip of quart- 

 zites which I cannot but look on as a wedged-in outlier of the Cuddapahs. 

 It is fco be noted that the river is here diverted from its ordinary course in 

 a decided north and south run of nearly 8 miles in length, which may be 

 attributed to the existence of a now-denuded and hidden prolongation of 

 the hard quartzites of Kalahasti, or to a line of fracture in this direction. 

 This outcrop, or the Pillameru strip of quartzites, forms only a very 

 The Pillameru out- l° w l '^Sy risG °^ rocky ground, much strewn on 

 crop ' its slopes with its own debris, and around which 



no exact boundary could be drawn. It is not a continuous outcrop, 

 though it appears to be so owing to covering soil and lateritic breccias 

 and conglomerates, and I am inclined to consider that it is really broken, 

 as it follows a more or less angular line not always parallel with the 

 strike of the adjacent gneiss. The two northern outcrops run with 

 this strike, while the southern ones are rather across it. A set of 

 trap dykes on the western side also seems to point to a fractured lie : 

 that striking in a north-easterly direction from Sheearum would, if it 

 be continued, cut across and between the two southern ridges ; a second, 

 to the south-east of Carsearum, runs at the northern end of the proper 

 Pillameru ridge ; and a third to the north strikes at the middle outcrop. 

 These quartzites cannot be ranged with those of the gneiss series ; they 

 are undoubted sandstones and conglomerates, and are in every way like 



( 147 ) 



