420 Lieut. -Colonel Sykes on a portion of Dukhun. 



inch to three feet in thickness, covered by a few feet of black earth. Some- 

 times in whiteness it resembles pounded chalk, and is then used by children 

 to smear their writing boards. 



In this state it occcurs at Jehoor and Islampoor near Ahmednuggur. At Kurkumb and at 

 Salseh, ten miles south of the fortress of Kurmaleh, it is met with under black earth in unusually 

 thick strata, and of a peculiar whiteness. Major Franklin notices " a stratum of earthy limestone, 

 white as chalk, at Sagar, occurring under a stratum of amorphous trap*." 



Nodular Limestone. 



The nodular limestone, which is the well-known kunkurf of India, {kunkur 

 being a native word for nodule,) occurs, like the preceding, disseminated or 

 diffused in the soil, and also on the surface. 1 have never seen the nodules 

 of a regular crystalline form. They vary in size from a marble to a twelve- 

 pound shot, and many of them are exceedingly irregular in shape, particularly 

 those dug from the banks of rivers. They are sometimes obscurely lenticular. 

 They are so abundant in certain localities that they appear as if showered 

 upon the earth, and disguise its colour. Dr. Buchanan mentions the same 

 in Rajmahl. When upon black soil, they are usually minute and tolerably 

 uniform in size : on other soils their form is variable. In the Ghats neither 

 pulverulent nor nodular lime is met with. It is unnecessary to particularize 

 the localities of the nodular kind, as it is of common occurrence eastward 

 from the hilly tracts of the Ghats, and is the only source of lime for mortar, a 

 class of persons making a livelihood by collecting the larger nodules. When 

 carefully burnt, they make an excellent cement. Captain Dangerfield de- 

 scribes "^the occurrence (in Malwa) in some parts, particularly near the bottom 

 of the small hills and banks of the rivulets, of a thin bed of loose marl or coarse 

 earthy limestone J". 



Captain Coulthard says, " In Sagar a white patch of this limestone moulder- 

 " ing by the weather is the source from whence comes the particles of kunkur, 

 " mixed with the black basaltic earth of the neighbouring valley, in such pro- 

 " portion as to add increased fertility to it; and if a rivulet meanders through 

 " that valley (and such is generally the fact), patches made up of aggregated 

 " particles of the same, will here and there be found ; and this it is which the 

 " native families pick out and work into lime §". Captain Coulthard refers the 

 origin of the nodules to limestone rock underlying basaltic strata, but I 



* Physical Class, Asiatic Researches, part i. p. 30. 



t The Mahratta word is not spelt with an " a." 



X Malcolm's Central India, p. 328. 



§ " Trap of the Sagar District," Physical Class, Asiatic Researches, p. 60. 



