142 BLANEOltD : GEOLOGY OF WESTERN SIND. 



met with here and there. In the great Manchhar tract running south- 

 ward along the eastern side of the Laki range 

 Fossil wood. 



south or Ranikot, and known as the Vera plain, 



large fragments of this silicified wood are common ; some are evidently 

 trunks of trees, being 30 feet and upwards in length and as much as 

 10 feet in- girth. On the surface these trunks are usually broken across, 

 but still the fragments are easily recognized as portions of the same 

 tree. The stems are mostly exogenous, but endogenous wood also occurs. 

 The lower tertiary rocks near the west bank of the Indus in the 

 Lower tertiary beds neighbourhood of Manjhand, Kotri, and Jhirak, 

 near Indus. form a low anticlinal with a very gentle inclina- 



tion, rarely exceeding 5°, on each side. The Khirthar limestone, which is 

 of no great thickness, probably not more than 300 or 400 feet, has been 

 denuded away from the central portion of the anticlinal, so as to expose 

 the underlying Ranikot beds, which are here quite conformable to 

 the Khirthars, and indeed pass into them . The Khirthar limestone here 

 and to the southward often abounds in Alveolina. In one place, about 

 Flint in Khirthar ^ miles west-north-west of Kotri, flint and chert 

 limestone. were f oun( l associated with the nummulitic lime- 



stone in large masses, as near Rohri and Sukkur. The outlying rises of 

 Khirthar limestone, east of the Indus at Hyderabad, and farther south, 

 will be noticed at the end of the Chapter. 



The Ranikot beds are tolerably uniform in composition throughout 



the large inlier occupied by them. A description 

 Ranikot beds. 

 , of them as they appear around the old coal mine 



at Lainyan (Leilan) will serve for the whole area. Lainyan, Leilan-je- 

 ' Tar, or Lyny an, is situated in a plain with a lime- 

 stone scarp to the eastward and hilly ground to 

 the north and south. The plain is composed of typical Ranikot beds ; 

 sandy shales and clays, variable in colour, but usually pink or purplish, 

 with a little gypsum, and beds of sandstone, grey or dark, and ferru- 

 ginous. Above these variegated beds are alternations of clay and ferru- 

 ginous shales with gypsum and hard brownish -yellow limestone contain- 

 ( 142 ) 



