366 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



of Western India, the more evident it will become that the intervals 

 between the lakes, if any there were, must have been exceedingly 

 small. This was the conviction left on my mind by travelling from 

 Nagpur to Elichpur, and this I think will be the feeling produced in 

 the mind of any one, by taking a glance on a map at any district, 

 like Col. Sykes's, that has been surveyed, even without a reference 

 to a lacustrine deposit. 



Minerals in the Trap. — I ought now to describe the minerals 

 contained in our overlying and underlying trap ; but this has been 

 so well done by Voysey, in his remarks on the structure of Sitabaldi 

 Hill*, that it is unnecessary. One of the most common in the 

 locality just named, though elsewhere rare, is a pitchy black sub- 

 stance, with a sloe-like bloom upon it, lining the amygdaloidal 

 cavities. This Voysey appears to have called " Conchoidal augite : " 

 my friend Dr. Carter supposes it obsidian. It occurs in bands lying 

 one above another, which may be followed to a great distance in a 

 horizontal direction. The intermediate spaces seem as if they had 

 been successive effluxes of volcanic matter, running along beneath the 

 freshwater deposit, and then under one another, each efflux being 

 united or welded to the preceding one by a vesicular belt. Many of 

 the minerals that are met with in the amygdaloid are derived from 

 the tertiary strata. This is particularly the case with jasper, the 

 veins of which, as may be learned from Benza's description of Pad- 

 pangali Hill, and as we perceive in numerous places in this vicinity, 

 are situated just at the zone of the vesicular trap's intrusion on the 

 superior deposit. Sometimes instead of being jaspidified, the en- 

 tangled parts of the strata are converted into chert, at other times 

 they are crystallized into ponderous masses of mesotype. In one 

 locality the calcareous matter is diffused as strings all through the 

 amygdaloid, forming seams of kankar, like those represented by 

 Newboldf ; in another they are scarcely enclosed within its substance, 

 but remain in blocks at the lower part of the deposit, which are 

 compact externally, but in the interior, where the heat has continued 

 longest, are found to be an aggregation of crystals. 



On the plain south of (ji\da.d Hill there is lying about a great 

 abundance of spherical nodules, which on being broken up exhibit a 

 structure radiating from a central point, so that they have been 

 mistaken for AlcyonitesX- The fakirs, who have located themselves 

 on the top of the eminence, have adroitly taken advantage of this 

 natural phsenomenon to exalt the name of the saint whose disciples 

 they profess to be. These nodules, according to them, are so many 

 fruits and spices of different sorts, which Shek Farid converted into 

 stone, the largest having once been cocoa-nuts, the middle-sized 

 betel-nuts (Areca), and the smallest nutmegs. There is a resemblance 

 of the nodules to the last two natural productions ; but, as all alike 

 display an acicular crystallization, it is difficult to trace the similarity 

 of the largest to the fruit of the cocoa. Much light must be intro- 



* As. Res. vol. xviii. p. 123. 



t R. As. Soc. Journ. vol. ix. p. 33. 



X Journ. Beng. Asiat. Soc. vol. ix. p. 625. 



