24 KING : COASTAL REGION OF THE GODAVARI DISTRICT. 



remarkably harsh, coarse, and, if anything-, lighter coloured, though there 

 is a good deal of ferruginous matter in them also. I got so used to this 

 difference in the feel of the sandy ground after passing* and re-passing* 

 across the boundary for many days, that I could note the change very 

 soon as my feet fell on the harsher and coarser debris. The debris is 

 also often gravelly, and much of the gravel is made up of small pieces 

 of hard stony clay and buff cherty material which is not often met with 

 in the upper Gondwanas. The ferruginous matter of these last is also 

 I think, on the whole, more evenly distributed through the beds : in the 

 Kamthis it is of tener distributed in seams, knotty and warty segregations, 

 and surface infiltration. 



Ragavapuram shales. — These and their fossils were first noticed in 

 the side of a small flat-topped hill, a short distance east of Ragavapuram, 

 about 28 miles west-by-north of Rajahmundry. They are generally very 

 fine-grained, rather unctuous, shaley clays and clayey shales of white 

 buff and lilac colours, laminated, but not very easily split up in the planes 

 of lamination, and breaking up easiest across the bedding in clunchy 

 sub-angular lumps having a rude eonchoidal fracture. 



The group does not, however, consist entirely of shales, but contains 



several seams, of more or less strength and per- 

 Lithology. 



sistence, of sandy beds at different levels, none of 



which are ever strong enough to take away its decidedly shaley facies. 



There are altogether about 100 feet of shales themselves at the thickest, 



the whole series never exceeding about 160 feet ; white and buff towards 



the bottom, purple and buff in the upper half. Among the shales there 



are three or four thin beds of greenish-yellow sands, soft and friable 



but rather hard at the outcrop, with brown ferruginous coating. These 



thin seams are each usually about 9 inches in thickness. The shales 



are much seamed with brown ferruginous matter in east-west joint 



planes, and in other minor fissures by infiltration. Some of the smaller 



fissures and the exposed surfaces of these are also coated with a bright 



sulphur-yellow ferruginous deposit. 



The outcrop shows for about half the length of the run of the north- 



( 218 ) 



