DECCAN TRAP SERIES. 37 



CHAPTER IV.— DECCAN TEAP SERIES. 



In the neighbourhood of Rajahmundry and on the opposite side of 

 Trap scarps of Rajah- tne river, further ranges of low hills, with scarps 

 ttmndry, &c. {- fa Q nor th-north-west and long south-eastward 



backs, of sandstone and other rocks, form the first fringe of rising 

 grounds edging the alluvial flats. The escarpments and their lower 

 slopes have long been known for their trappean outcrops which display 

 on both sides of the river interbedded fossiliferous limestones, and on 

 one side (the western) are underlying sets of beds. also containing 

 numerous fossils. 



On January 30th, 1835, Dr. P. M. Benza, while travelling in this 



district, visited the western or Pungadi region in 

 Long known. . 



company with Colonel Cullen who had told him 



that he would here meet with " shell limestone underlaying and alter- 

 nating with basalt." 1 I have been unable to find any record of Colonel 

 Cullen's observations on these beds, for he had evidently become ac- 

 quainted with them in previous years ; but he was at any rate right as 

 to there being an infra-trappean set of beds, as well as an intertrappean 

 outcrop. It is not at all clear from Benza's paper whether he did see 

 these underlying rocks, but he does not distinctly mention them ; and he 

 appears to have misunderstood the position of the Rajahmundry sand- 

 stones which have, somehow or other even by subsequent writers, been 

 considered as subjacent to the traps. Otherwise, Benza's paper is an 

 interesting record of the early knowledge of this so distant and isolated 

 an outlier of the Deccan traps on the eastern coast. He does not offer 

 any opinion as to the age of the fossiliferous beds. 



The locality near to Rajahmundry does not appear to have been 

 brought to notice until 1854, when Mr. Walter Elliott, of the Civil 

 Service, sent a collection of fossils from Kateru to the Asiatic Society 

 of Bengal, with notes 2 thereon. He shows that the Kateru limestone 

 crops up between flows of basalt, but offers no comment on the age of 



1 Madras Journ. Lit. and Sci., 1837, Vol. V, pp. 50—53. 



2 Journ. As. Soc, Bengal, Vol. XXIII, p. 399. 



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