124 BLANFORD : GEOLOGY OF WESTERN SIND. 



highest Manchhar beds seen are yellowish-brown grits, soft and argilla- 



Section near Bha^o- ceous as a ru l e > Du ^ occasionally hard and calca- 

 tLoro ; Manchhar beds. re ous ; sometimes they are mottled buff and white, 

 and they are associated with argillaceous limestones of the same colour, 

 and with conglomerates. Beneath these beds is a great thickness of 

 the characteristic grey sandstone. A few of the beds which are harder 

 are worked into a kind of platter used for baking bread upon. With 

 the sandstone are bands of conglomerate containing fragments of sand- 

 stone, shale, and clay, dicotyledonous fossil wood, crocodiles' teeth, and 

 a few bones. Some few mammalian teeth also occur, isolated and single 

 as usual. 



Beneath the Manchhars there is a very remarkable and brightly 

 Variegated sands and coloured group of sands and clays, white, red, 

 clays, and brown in colour. Thin bands of highly 



ferruginous sandstone, black and dark-brown in colour, and occasionally 

 passing into ironstone, are interstratified ; and some small irregular beds 

 of very silicious rock resembling quartzite are met with, but they are 

 rare and of subordinate importance. Some of the clays are mottled 

 white and purple, and gypsum is frequently associated with the softer 

 beds. These richly- coloured and variegated rocks have a very peculiar 

 aspect, and are different from any of the formations known to occur 

 in the Khirthar range, although somewhat similar beds are found in the 

 Upper Nari group in places. 



As a rule, these variegated beds are unfossiliferous, but in some 

 places the uppermost layer, a slightly calcareous 

 grit, contains numerous Gasteropoda, Lamellibran- 

 cJiiata, and Foraminifera, some of which are Gaj species, one of them 

 being Ostrea multicostata. Valves of Balanus are also found. In a bed 

 immediately above are some large oysters belonging to a species else- 

 where found in lower Manchhar beds. Farther to the southward, in 

 precisely the same position, at the base of the Manchhar beds, a thin 

 band of typical Gaj beds comes in above the Nari group. 



The variegated sandstones of Bhagothoro rest upon typical lower 

 ( 124 ) 



