'570 J. G. Malcolmson, Esq., on the Fossils of 



too ruinous a state to admit of any general conclusions ; although, from the 

 very great number of individuals collected in various localities, without adding 

 any fresh species, it is probable that nearly the whole which exist have been 

 procured. But when the vast extent of the country occupied by the basalt is 

 considered, and that a still greater tract was broken up or disturbed at the time 

 of its eruption, it will not appear improbable, that a rule, founded on the dis- 

 appearance of marine shells in districts exposed to no such extensive causes of 

 destruction of animal life, should not apply. 



In the preceding pages, I have described the fossils discovered by Mr. 

 Geddes and myself in various parts of the Sichel mountains, and the Valley of 

 Berar, extending through the great trap district for 140 miles ; and I shall now 

 shortly refer to other localities at great distances from each other, where the 

 same fossils have been found in similar rocks, buried under the basalt. 



Other Districts of India in which similar Freshwater Shells have 

 been found. 



Dr. Spilsbury discovered, eighteen miles from Jubalpoor, in an undulating plain studded with 

 irregular masses of trap, blocks of " indurated clay," containing casts of fossil shells, for the most 

 part siliceous, and resembling those discovered by Dr. Voysey in the Gawilghur range*. At 

 Saugor, nearly 100 miles to the north-west, reversed shells, stated to be exactly the same as those 

 of Jubalpoor, were discovered by Dr. Spry in a bed of limestone, entirely surrounded by an am- 

 phitheatre of trap hills, in which a lower range of compact sandstone is included f. This fossil- 

 iferous limestone is covered by 17 feet of basalt, and rests on a coarse siliceous grit, under which 

 basalt is again met with. In the same neighbourhood fine specimens of silicified palms are found. 

 Jubalpoor and Saugor are situated to the north of the Nerbudda, in the great Vindya range ; and 

 in the same district fossil bones of Mammalia occur in limestone capped by basalt. The drawings 

 of the shells differ a little from each other:]:, but the fossils are stated to be the same ; and, as far 

 as Mr. Sowerby could judge, they do not differ from the Pliysa Prinsepii, The similarity was 

 more obvious in other specimens left in India, and I have no doubt of their being the same. It 

 is, however, desirable that the specimens themselves, in the Museum of the Asiatic Society of 

 Bengal, should be compared, that the connexion of the northern and southern portions of the trap 

 formation may be placed beyond a doubt. South of the Nerbudda, fossils are again met with in 

 the mountainous country, north of the sources of the Taptee, at a place called Jirpah, near to 

 which trap hills have broken through the sandstone. Dr. Voysey, in speaking of the heat of the 

 steel furnaces of Neermul, notices the occurrence of an " indurated clay" containing fossils at this 

 place, but he gives no further information regarding them§. In a small specimen of this rock, 

 Mr. Sowerby recognised the Paludina Deccanensis, and a portion of a larger shell, probably the 

 Physa Prinsepii; and the matrix is the same as the fossiliferous " indurated clay" from Gawil- 

 ghur; it also much resembles many of the varieties of chert in which the Berar fossils are found. 

 The third range of hills has been described by Dr. Voysey under the name of the Gawilglmr 

 Mountains, and it forms a very remarkable feature in the physicalgeography of Central India. In 



* Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. ii., p. 205. f Ibid., pp. 376, 639. 



X Ibid., p. 583, Plate 20. § Journal of the Asiatic Society, vol. i., p. 247. 



