492 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. June 17, 



titles of magnetic iron and highly ferruginous hornblende-rock which 

 are now, as they must have been then, carried into the sea by every 

 freshet in the rivers. 



The highest level to which the shingle-bank is piled up, along the 

 southern flank of the Naggery mountains, accords well with the 

 level which I suppose to have been the uppermost limit of the 

 laterite sea around the Alicoor hills, and which I estimate to have 

 been rather over 500 feet above sea-level. 



There remains now another set of implements to be considered, 

 namely, those found occurring at elevations so much exceeding the 

 above that it is most unlikely that they were ever included in de- 

 posits of marine origin, there being no evidence to justify the assump- 

 tion that so great a depression of the Indian peninsula has occurred 

 since the first appearance of the human race. The probability is that 

 the implements found at such great elevations were preserved in local 

 deposits of freshwater, or possibly subaerial, origin, from which they 

 have been washed out by comparatively recent action, of rain or of run- 

 ning water ; for I do not think it possible they could have long resisted 

 the tremendous weathering power of the sun, if they had been lying 

 exposed on the surface. A considerable number of well-shaped 

 quartzite implements were found by Mr. Charles A. Oldham and 

 Mr. King in the southern part of the Cuddapah district, chiefly, I 

 believe, near Rachotee, at an elevation of about 1400 feet above the 

 sea-level, — an elevation greater by several hundred feet than the 

 highest vertical limit I have ventured to assign to the coast-laterite. 

 As I am unacquainted with that part of the country, and with the cir- 

 cumstances under which they were found, I am unable to offer any 

 further opinion about these particular implements. There is in the 

 Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street, at the present moment, 

 a specimen stated to have been procured from Yamimbadi, a town at 

 the northern extremity of the Salem district, standing at an eleva- 

 tion of 1150 feet above the sea-level. If really derived from that 

 place, this specimen would be further extremely interesting as having 

 been found at a very much greater distance than any other I am 

 acquainted with from the quartzite country. 



At lesser levels than those discovered by Mr. Charles Oldham, but 

 still from places considerably elevated over the 500 to 600-foot level of 

 the coast-laterite, numerous implements were obtained by my col- 

 league Mr. "Wm. King, and by myself, in the Kurnool District, in 

 the neighbourhood of Eoodrar (see fig. 3). These lay on the sur- 

 face of the soil, from which they had seemingly been washed 

 out by rain-action. The soil there consists of a gravelly mix- 

 ture of small globular Kunkur (or calcareous tufa- concretions) with 

 pellets of clayey brown haematite, similar to those so characteristic 

 of lateritic deposits. Black cotton- soil, or Eegur, frequently covers 

 the former soil, but has never been found to contain implements. 

 Pebbles of quartzite are not common here, except^ close in to the 

 quartzite beds of the Cuddapah group in the I^ullamulla mountains. 



Here, as in the case of the coast-laterite, not a single fossil shell 

 or other organism was found to throw light on the nature of the 



