DECCAN TRAP SERIES. 41 



The fossiliferous band is variable in its constitution and thickness : 

 Lit]iolo it is, south of Dudkur, a hard brown and greyish 



sandy limestone of about 6 inches, resting on good 

 sandstone which is rather calcareous. At the crossing of the road 

 (mentioned above), it is a hard dark-grey sandy and earthy limestone 

 of above 2 feet in thickness. Towards Gowripatnam the limestone 

 band is not so definite ; it shades down into a coarse brown calcareous 

 sandstone, full of fossils, 2 feet in thickness, and this is the character 

 of the outcrop still further on, past Gowripatnam. Near Devarapili, 

 or about \ a mile east of it, and to the south of the high road, there is 

 a small section exposed in a nala at a little cliff over which the small 

 stream falls and wauders through the fields below. There are, uppermost, 

 about 5 feet of soft friable weathered fine-grained dull dirty greenish 

 trap. This trap is lying and undulating slightly over limestone 

 (crowded with Turritella) and yellowish and green friable sand- 

 stones j that is, the trap is sometimes covering up solid hard parts of 



m .. ,. the Turritella limestone, and close bv, within a 



Turritella zone. . •" 



few inches, it is lying on the friable sandstone 

 which is properly the lower band of the fossiliferous seam. In this 

 short outcrop, the more calcareous band is very thin, or in massive blocks 

 or it has disappeared altogether, which feature may be due either to 

 the seam of limestone having been originally deposited of a varying 

 thickness, or, as I am more inclined to think, to its surface having been 

 denuded prior to the flow of trap. The proper upper fossiliferous bed is 

 not more than 4 or 5 inches to a foot in thickness ; where the blocks or 

 masses of bed are thickest (say 2 feet), there is an upper part about 6 

 inches thick of hard, compact, sandy limestone, with fragments of Turri- 

 tellm and other shells scattered through it; and below this is a more 

 friable sandy clay limestone, crowded with fine and large specimens of 

 these shells. The thick band of fossiliferous rock rests on yellowish and 

 greenish fine soft sands, also containing a few fossils. 



The distinctive and commonest fossil is a Turritella, the rock being 

 often quite crowded with it. The other fossils are generally found in 



( 235 ) 



