VI PREFACE. 



If, then, in nothing else, the importance of the accompanying reports 

 will at once be obvious in their reducing to one system all the facts 

 regarding the structure of Bundelcund and of the Nerbudda valley. 



I have also, in the present volume, endeavoured to give a summary 

 of the fossil evidence derived from these rocks in Central India, or 

 from their representatives elsewhere, so far as this evidence has been 

 worked out. This has been done, in anticipation of the future publica- 

 tion of all the details, in order, so far as possible, to indicate, if I could 

 not establish, the probable position in the general geological succession, 

 which these groups of rocks, relatively, hold. There is no doubt that 

 much, very much, yet remains to be done, before definite conclusions 

 can be arrived at on such points. And, if it occur to any as an 

 objection to such reports as those now given, that they are detached, 

 and fragmentary, (but no one is so fully alive to the force of this 

 objection, as the authors themselves) it may, I think, fairly be asked 

 that they should remember, on the one hand, the immensity of area 

 over which an Indian Geologist must wander, and on the other hand, 

 the great difficulty of establishing good geological horizons in a new 

 country of such extent. True, there may be on the Western shores 

 of the Peninsula, some beds the epoch of which is tolerably fixed, but 

 this datum is of little use to the investigator whose labours may be 

 confined to the Eastern limits of the same Peninsula, unless there be a 

 knowledge of the intervening country, which stretches over an interval 

 of some twenty degrees of longitude. The Himalya and Sub-Himalya 

 ranges may give a tolerably fixed datum, and still before this can be 

 applied in the examination of the Southern extremity of the peninsula, 

 at a distance of some fifteen hundred miles, the variation in mineral 

 character and in organic contents over this interval of five and twenty 

 degrees of latitude, must be traced out. Moreover, some general idea 

 of the relations of the rocks at these far distant points must be obtained 

 before it will be possible to look for any of that exhaustive minuteness 

 of detailed examination, which might fairly be expected at the hands. 



