the Eastern Portion of the Basaltic District of India. 549 



earth, and many of them filled with calcedonies, zeolites, quartz crystals, and, 

 more rarely, calcareous spar, of the same kind as those, so remarkable for 

 their beauty, in the portion of this formation described by Colonel Sykes (Geo- 

 logical Transactions, vol. 4., p. 422*), Thecrystals also occur in seams, or are 

 diffused through the trap ; and in both cases are intimately mixed with its sub- 

 stance. In the bed of a torrent between two of these hillocks, I met with some 

 soft, clayey, schistose fragments, and others of a siliceous character, and of a 

 black bituminous appearance in the centre, containing very perfect specimens 

 of the Paliidina Deccanensis (Pl.XLVlI. fig. 20,) and fragments of other shells 

 to be hereafter described. Those which I examined were converted into calce- 

 dony. A laborious research on the hill failed to discover them in situ ; but about 

 half-way up the escarpment of the principal mountain, which is very steep, and 

 composed of concentric nodular basalt, imbedded in a soft greenish wacke, a 

 narrow band of a singular quartz rock projected about two feet from the sur- 

 face. It was remarkably scabrous, of various shades of white and red, and 

 had cavities on its surface covered with fine silky crystals. It had every ap- 

 pearance of having been forced into its present situation, when the basalt co- 

 vered and partially melted the bed to which it belonged. Many fragments 

 of this rock were found below with the shells ; and it was again met with, to- 

 gether with the same and other fossils imbedded in basalt, near Hutnoor. The 

 specific gravity of this rock is 2*473, and some of the specimens effervesced 

 feebly in acids, a portion of lime being dissolved ; circumstances in which it 

 corresponds with a similar formation found by Voysey, associated with shells, 

 probably of the same kind, at Medcondah (south of the Godavery), an insulated 

 basaltic hill resting on granite, to which I shall have occasion again to refer. 

 The highest summit of the hills, above the locality of the fossils, is conical, 

 but it is capped by a perfectly horizontal stratified rock, the nature of which 

 I could not determine. It is most probably tabular basalt, although that rock 

 is seldom found in similar situations. 



Such are the appearances presented on ascending the difficult pass leading 

 up the steep escarpment of the Sichel hills, which form the southern boundary 

 of the eastern portion of the great trap formation of Central India. The hills 

 extend from the junction of the Wurdah and Godavery rivers (the basins of 

 which they separate), till they are lost in the gradual rise of the country to the 



* A beautiful variety of chabasie, Iiaving the angles replaced by triangular or pentagonal faces 

 supporting a rhomboidal surface, of which beautiful specimens abound in certain localities of the 

 western portion of the formation, has not been met with in this neighbourhood ; but, like some 

 other minerals of the basaltic district, it is not generally diffused in the rocks where it is most 

 abundant ; so that I have travelled for several hundred miles without meeting with it. 



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