370 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



pressed stems of trees in situ, one of which, presenting its thin 

 edge in the side of a quarry, may be traced for about 20 feet. A 

 few inches farther down we come to the largest of the iron-bands, 

 which consists of a conglomerate, about 6 inches thick, enclosing 

 fragments of dicotyledonous wood converted into a kind of jet and 

 impregnated with iron. Ferruginous bands are common not only at 

 Silewa^a, but also at Babulkhe^a and Tondakheiri. It is only, how- 

 ever, in the neighbourhood of Chanda that any one of them lias 

 been found to contain wood in a silicified state. 



B. Underlying the iron-band we come to layers of a much finer 

 kind, consisting of argillaceous sandstone, varying from white to 

 yellow and pink, and generally containing specks of mica. These 

 strata, which are used for pavement and carved work, extend down- 

 wards for about 15 feet, when they gradually become coarser until 

 they are suitable for millstones. The entire depth of these layers 

 after their change from fine to coarse has not been ascertained. 

 Dispersed through them, as we saw was the case with the upper 

 member, are occasional angular fragments, so that it is difficult to 

 distinguish lithologically between the two, except that the inferior 

 beds always contain less oxide of iron than the superior. 



It is in the argillo-arenaceous strata that we have met with nearly 

 all the fossils which the sandstone of Silewat/a, Bokhara, Babulkhec?a, 

 Bharatwa^a, Tondakheiri, Bazargau, Chorkheiri, and Chanda has 

 yielded ; and there is every reason to believe that the imbedded 

 blocks of Kampti also, which have furnished so many vegetable 

 remains, were originally derived from them. 



Chorkheiri and Chanda are the furthest limits north and south 

 from which I have procured fossils of tlie inferior member of the 

 sandstone ; and the fact, that the fossils are exactly the same, in 

 addition to a resemblance in lithological characters, demonstrates 

 that the strata are so also. 



Between these two extreme points, however, under an outcrop of 

 coarse sandstone of much the same character as the generality of our 

 upper beds, except that it is not coloured by iron or pervaded by 

 iron-bands, there are found at Mangali and its neighbourhood fossili- 

 ferous strata applied to the same architectual purposes as our ordinary 

 lower strata, though they diflPer from them in being of a deep-red 

 colour, finer and more sectile, and with a larger admixture of clay 

 and mica. As the Mangali red slaty sandstone contains scarcely any 

 organic remains common to the inferior layers about Nagpur, it is 

 not without hesitation that I include it under the present head, and 

 arrange its fossils along with those of the more typical strata. 



[Fossils of B. — For the same reasons as stated above, p. 360, in 

 the case of the palaeontology of the tertiary deposits, the numerous 

 fossils of this division of the sandstone series are here merely men- 

 tioned in short, their detailed description being deferred until the 

 publication of Part II. of this Memoir. 



These fine and coarse argillaceous sandstones, rich with plant- 

 remains, have afforded, — 



