HISLOP AND HUNTER NAGPUR. 383 



guished by the entireness of their fronds. Low-growmg plants with 

 grooved and jointed stems inhabited the marshes ; and Conifers and 

 other Dicotyledonous trees, with Palms, raised their heads aloft. 

 Meanwhile plutonic action was going on, and strata, as they were 

 formed, were shattered and reconstructed into a breccia ; and finally 

 an extensive outburst of granite elevated the bed of the lake and left 

 it dry land. The sea now flowed at Pondicherry and Trichinopoly, 

 depositing the cretaceous strata which are found there. 



At the end of this epoch Central India suffered a depression and 

 was again covered by a vast lake, communicating with the sea, not 

 towards Cutch as before, but in the neighbourhood of Rajamandri, 

 to which the salt water had now advanced. When the lake had 

 during its appointed time furnished an abode to its peculiar living 

 creatures and plants, it was invaded by an immense outpouring of 

 trap, which filled up its bed, and left Western and a great part of 

 Central India a dreary waste of lava. But these basaltic steppes 

 were ere long broken up. A second eruption of trap, not now coming 

 to the surface, but forcing a passage for itself under the newer 

 lacustrine strata, lifted up the superincumbent mass in ranges of 

 flat-topped hills. Since then, to the east, water has swept over the 

 plutonic and sandstone rocks, and laid down quantities of transported 

 materials impregnated with iron, and some time after there were 

 deposited in the west a conglomerate, imbedding bones of huge 

 mammals, and above it a stratum of brown clay, which immediately 

 preceded the superficial deposits of the black and red soils. 



I have to acknowledge my great obligations to Lieut. -Col. Alcock, 

 of the Madras Artillery, and Drs. Leith and Carter, of Bombay, for 

 assisting me in obtaining access to books (or extracts from them), of 

 which I should otherwise have been deprived. 



The map (PL X.) of the district described is coloured geologically 

 from an excellent political map given in Rush ton's Bengal and Agra 

 Gazetteer for 1842. The formations between Chindwao^a and the 

 Mahadewa Hills are laid down from a sketch obligingly furnished to 

 me by Mr. Sankey. 



