RECENT DEPOSITS OP NERBUDDA VALLEY. 297 



At a greater distance from the hill its more usual form is that of a 

 coarse gravel, derived from the sands and conglomerate of the lower 

 group, and containing, not rarely, fragments of bones derived from those 

 beds: whilst along the south side of the valley it consists of sheets of 

 shingle and boulders' entirely derived from the Trap, sqhists, and other 

 rocks constituting the hills in that quarter. These enormous accumu- 

 lations of shingle often 30 to 40 feet in thickness are well exhibited in 

 the neighbourhood of Barkhera on the Sher nuddi near Mopani, and in 

 the stream near Lokurtullye, 38 miles south west from Hosungabad. 

 These shingly accumulations are nowhere seen in the centre of the 

 ■valley and are chiefly met with where the larger streams issue from 

 the hills which bound the valley to the south, and through whose 

 agency they would seem in a great measure to have been formed, when 

 these streams ran at a different level from that they now have. 



In the bed of the Bikampur nulla, which flows into the Nerbudda 

 Rarity of fossil bones above .Thansi Ghat, I found the rib of an Ele- 



in the upper group. 



pliant at the bottom of a bed of coarse shingle 

 consisting of little besides Trap boulders, and but a few feet above the 

 reddish yellow clay of the lower group on which they rest. 



A few other fossils have been noticed in these beds but such 

 are extremely rare and are probably derived from beds of the lower 

 group. 



In the centre of the valley the lower beds of this upper group usually 

 consist of sands and gravels often cemented into a compact stone by lime, 

 and passing upwards into fine alluvium and regur. These beds are scarce- 

 ly distinguishable from those of the lower group, the only distinction 

 often being that, whereas bones are rarely altogether wanting in the 

 sands of the one, they are very rarely indeed present in those of the 

 other. The same shells however, which occur in the lower, range equally 

 through the upper, and the alluvium in some places is quite crammed 

 with shells of Paludina Bengalensis. In the regur, however, shells 



2 b 



