OTHER FORMATIONS. 75 



except above Gtidiir, all seen below that place being of an estuarine 

 character. The Swarnamukhi valley is strongest in the pale-coloured sandy 

 deposits, a wide spread of which lies behind the line of Cuddalore sand- 

 stone ridges. 



The usual strip of blown sands fringing the Coromandel is rather 



narrow in this field, possibly in great measure on 

 Blown sands. 



account of the moister north-east wind not being 



powerful enough to carry the sand far inland, while the drier westerly 

 winds carry much of it back again to the sea. I examined most of the 

 coast line during the hot months (April, May, June, and July), when it 

 was evident that the sand is being constantly blown eastward, the shore 

 being quite hazy with the stream of sand, which rose about 2 feet over 

 the surface of the ground. There is generally a thin sandy strip of 

 about 2 or 3 miles in width which becomes heaped up in low undulations, 

 or is often arranged in long narrow belts with intervening strips of alluvi- 

 um of dried up back-waters. In the dry weather most of these inter- 

 vening strips are quite dry, or have a shallow channel open to the tide. 

 The most notable example of this strip arrangement occurs in Srihari- 

 kota island, or the land lying between the sea and the Pulicat Lake, and 

 again to the east of Kavali, 34 miles north of Nellore. 



The more typical blown sandhills or dunes occur at a point on the 

 coast about 14 miles south-east-by-east of Nellore, at Strinavasarow 

 Chatram, about 1 8 miles due east of Gudur, and generally along the shore 

 of Sriharikota. In the first case, the shore belt of sand towards Toolypoliem 

 is a regular tumbled sea of sandhills ranged in long waves having a 

 north-north-east to south-south-west strike, sloping up gently but quickly 

 from the eastward and dropping down to the westward by steep slope?. 

 Along the northern edge of this spread there is a dense barrier of screw 

 pines and palmyra palms, and here the hills drop down to the green-sward, 

 just like a freshly-tipped railway bank, from a height of 30 or 40 feet. 

 The surfaces of the dunes were beautifully rippled with an east-north-east 

 to west-south-west strike. Besides these fresher-looking accumulations, 

 there are grass-grown ridges a little further inland, extending out as far 



( 183 ) 



