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PKOCEEDIXGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



[Mar. 20, 



colour, are alike in many other respects. Both are thin-beclcled and 

 argillo-arenaceous, and, after continuing so for about 15 feet, they 

 both pass into a coarser whitish sandstone below ; and though the 

 fossils are so diverse in their general character, and though many ve- 

 getable remains found near Nagpur and Chanda are wanting at Man- 

 gab, yet the fossil plants that do occur in the latter neighbourhood 

 are on the whole similar to those in the former. Thus at Mesa there 

 is a seed or seed-vessel about |- in. long, and \ in. broad, resembling 

 a paper kite in form. This also occurs of the very same dimensions 

 and shape at Kampti. Again, a smaller fossil of a similar kind is 

 common to the beds at Mesa and Bharatwac?a. Further, a small piece 

 of stem from Mangali, with distant lanceolate scars running along 

 it, is the miniature of a larger branch from Kampti. And, lastly, 

 Mangali furnishes various sulcated jointed stems, which, as far as 

 the state of their preservation warrants a judgment, resemble stems 

 abundant at Kampti, Silewarfa, BharatwacM, &c. This amount of 

 agreement, apparently specific, between the fossils from Mangali 

 and from the vicinity of Nagpur, is sufficient, in my opinion, to autho- 

 rize the inference that the strata containing them are nearly, if not 

 exactly, on the same geological horizon. 



5. Kota on the PranMid. — And now, as I have pointed out the 

 connexion between our Nagpur plant-strata and those of Bengal, so 

 with the addition of the Mangali beds and their animal remains, I 

 may institute a comparison between them and the rocks at Kota, on 

 the Pranhi'ta. There, under a great thickness of coarse iron-banded 

 sandstones, developed in the neighbouring hills, we have thin-bedded 

 strata abounding, as at Mangali, in animal remains, including 

 Lepidotus Deccanensis, L. hngieeps, L. breviceps, and (Echmodus 

 Egertoni. In addition to these ganoid Fishes obtained by the late 

 Drs. Walker and Bell, I have procured from the same locality the 

 exuviae of Insects and Entomostraca, among which there are Gypridm 

 and a species of Esikeria determined, on the authority of Mr. Rupert 

 Jones, to be identical with the larger form at Mangali. With this 

 connecting link between the two series of rocks, the presumption is 

 that they are of the same age. The vegetable remains at Kota seem 

 to consist principally of stems, but in such an imperfect state of pre- 

 servation as to be wholly unrecognizable. Dr. Bell, however, in a 

 Layer of sandstone only G feet below the iehthyolitic bituminous shale, 

 discovered impressions of " leaves," which (although he was disposed 

 to consider them dicotyledonous) belonged to a genus with simple 

 entire fronds and anastomosing venation; and I conceive myself 

 justified in believing them to have been acrogenous, and belonging 

 to a species of GJossopteris. The arenaceous stratum containing 

 them is obviously part of the same series as the bituminous shale, 

 with which it alternates, there being as much of the shale below as 

 above the sandstone. Now, as from the existence of a species of 

 Esikeria common to the rocks at Mangali and Kota, Ave inferred 

 their contemporaneousness, so from the discovery of what appears to 

 be a species of Glossopteris at Kota, we are led to the conclusion 

 that the rocks there are connected in age with those near Nagpur, 



