DECCAN TEAP SERIES. 53 



however, the connection by their associated deposits and their fossils : 



and it seems almost certain from these, that they and the lowest division 



of the traps of the Deccan are contemporaneous to some extent. 



Mr. Blanford, in the Manual of the Geology of India and in other 



works, has treated very largely of the Deccan 

 Age of intertrappeans. 



traps, and ranges the lower member of them as 



preferably of upper cretaceous age ; or rather, that the volcanic outbursts 



began while the upper cretaceous rocks were being deposited on the 



south-eastern coast of India. 



The occurrence of the infratrappean beds of Dudkur, with fossils 

 having what appears to be a cretaceous facies, and on which I think 

 the traps are slightly unconformable, would imply a somewhat later age 

 than this ; but it is possible that when the collection of these fossils is 

 thoroughly and competently examined, the correlation may be drawn closer. 



The intertrappean beds are clearly of the trappean period, and they 



are in some respects rangeable with Hislop's 

 Hislop's view, 



intertrappeans of Central India; but the latter 



are essentially of lacustrine or fresh water origin, while the Pungadi 



and Kateru fauna is estuarine. However, there are three shells common to 



the two, namely, Paludina nor mails, Thysa prinsepi and Lymnea, subulata, 



and, as it appeared when Hislop wrote, there seemed very good reason 



for his conclusion that the rocks of the one locality were a fair estuarine 



representative of the lacustrine rocks of the other, and that they are 



of lower eocene age. 



I am unable myself to enlarge on or narrow Hislop's generalization 



further than to instance the fact that the traps 

 Blanford's view. 



do not appear to be disassociated from the infra- 

 trappean beds in this locality to such an extent of unconformity as the 

 supposedly upper eocene age of the intertrappean beds would require. 

 W. T. Blanford has, however, entered on this question with reference to 

 the character of the mollusca of these latter beds in the following extracts 

 from the Manual of the Geology of India l : — "The mollusca, however, 



1 Part 1, p. 319. 



( 247 ) 



