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PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [June 11, 



2. On a Fossil Fish from the Table-land of the Deccan, in 

 the Peninsula of Indi a. By Colonel Sykes, F.R.S., G.S. With 

 a Description of the Specimens. By Sir P. de M. G. Egerton, 

 F.R.S., G.S. 



[Pl. XV.] 



General Fraser, the British Minister at the Court of the Nizam 

 at Hyderabad, in a letter to me dated the 3 1st July 1850, mentioned 

 his having transmitted some specimens of fossil fish, with impressions 

 of leaves, in a matrix which Dr. Walker, whom General Fraser had 

 employed in Statistical and Natural History researches in the Nizam's 

 territories, considered as appertaining to a coal-formation. General 

 Fraser had previously caused specimens to be sent to the Asiatic So- 

 ciety of Calcutta ; but the reports upon them not satisfying Dr. Walker, 

 a second series of the specimens were sent to me by General Fraser, 

 with a request that I would ascertain their possible relations with true 

 coal-strata. 



Considering the enormous development of trap, covering some 

 200,000 square miles in the Deccan, — the granitic basis of the whole 

 Peninsula of India, — the area occupied by laterite, — the want of sedi- 

 mentary rocks, — and the hitherto total absence of organic marine fos- 

 sils in the Deccan (for a few shells brought to notice by the late Dr. 

 Malcolmson were either fluviatile or lacustrine), — the discovery of 

 fossil fish on the margin of the trap region was a novelty necessarily 

 of great interest, as indicative of the former submerged state of the 

 Peninsula of India. The fossils arrived in October last, and a glance 

 showed that the remains were imbedded in bituminous schist. The 

 specimens were met with, General Fraser mentioned, near to the con- 

 fluence of the Wurda and Godavery Rivers, north of Hyderabad and 

 south of Nagpoor. But as the Wurda runs into the Wein Gunga, 

 and the latter runs into the Godavery, General Fraser probably meant 

 the confluence of the Godavery and the Wein Gunga. The junction 

 of the Wurda and Wein Gunga is about 1 70 miles north-easterly 

 from Hyderabad, in latitude 19° 87' N., and longitude 79° 50', and 

 the junction of the Wein Gunga and Godavery is about 115 miles 

 north-easterly from Hyderabad, in latitude 18° 49' 30" N., and lon- 

 gitude 79° 56' 30". I have reason to believe these localities to be 

 from 1200 to 1400 feet above the sea-level. 



The Curator of the Geological Society inspected the specimens of 

 fossil fish, and he considered that they belonged to a genus which in 

 European latitudes is usually associated with the oolitic formation. 

 The oolitic rock nearest to the locality of these fossils is in Cutch, 

 fully 1000 miles distant, and with a thickness of from 4000 to 5000 

 feet of trap intervening for a couple of hundred miles ; nevertheless, 

 many of the European associates of oolite exist upon the Wurda and 

 Godavery ; namely, bituminous shale, wood-opal, calcareous spar, 

 rhomboidal quartz, agates, chalcedony, hornstone, &c, and the rock 

 itself may be overlaid by the prodigious flow of trap. It was not 

 until the arrival in town recently of my friend Sir Philip Egerton, 

 whose acumen and critical knowledge of fossil ichthyology render his 



