210 NERBUDDA DISTRICT. 



We have before alluded to the opinion of Mr. Hislop, that these eocene 

 sandstones have been " metamorphosed into gneiss, by the intrusion, 

 apparently, of some deep seated plutonic rock, evidenced by veins of 

 pegmatite." There is, in our area, nothing whatever analogous to this, 

 and no evidence whatever of such plutonic action subsequent to the de- 

 position of these beds ; on the contrary these beds are everywhere re- 

 markably undisturbed and horizontal. 



The occurrence of silicified trunks of palm trees nearly entire and well 

 preserved, in the neighbourhood of Sagur cantonments, has been long 

 known. So long since as 1833, Dr. Spry(a) in a paper published in the 



been all hitherto put together, as older tertiary, may in reality be of even pre-cretaceous 

 date. But the discussion of the age of the Mahadeva group of our classification, of the 

 Lameta and subtrappean beds of Jubbulpur as connected with the subtrappean rocks of the 

 Nagpur district, can only be satisfactorily taken up after the intervening country has been 

 examined. I have long since suggested (6) that the former were of the Eocene age, a view 

 which Mr. Hislop has now adopted. But that the upper and " subtrappean" beds of the 

 sandstones in Nagpur, are analogous to, or even approximately on the same geological 

 horizon as the upper beds of the sandstones in other places, is not only not yet established, 

 but, bearing in mind the immense amount of denudation which has occurred previously to 

 the outbreak of the volcanic flows, and the fact that the lowermost of those flows rests 

 indiscriminately on rocks of all ages in the district, the probability is rather that these 

 " upper" beds should frequently prove of very different age. This remark is the more 

 called for, because some strangely erroneous identifications have been based on this sup- 

 position that, granting the base of the Trappean rocks to be. throughout of nearly, if not 

 exactly, the same geological epoch, the age of the sedimentary beds immediately underlying 

 them must equally, be in all places of one geological epoch. A supposition, it is needless 

 to say, entirely without any proof. 



To facilitate identification we add measurements and a few brief remarks on the speci- 

 mens we have in the Survey collections. 

 Melania. 



1. Melania quadrilineata Sow. Chikni — 



(?2). A large specimen, possibly another species, from Pahar-Singha Nagpur, 

 measures 0.47 — 0.23. 



(a) Jour. Asiat.Soc. Bengal, Vol. II, p. 639. 

 (6) Memoirs of the Geol. Survey of India, Vol. I, p. 171. 



