of Salem and Barramahal. 161 



the slightest possibility of being produced by sedimentary 

 action. The full description of this formation, which I shall 

 call schistous series, will form the subject of a future paper. 

 This formation does not appear to be of any great depth, 

 and seems, when I have had opportunities of observing its 

 depth, always to rest upon a bed of solid granite. 



Most authors seem to agree in describing a bed of granite 

 as underlying, at various depths, the whole of the plains of 

 South India; and it appears indeed probable that all the 

 prominent granite hills are connected below the surface plains 

 with the same bed of granite. Where small rivers run be- 

 tween granite hills, I have generally been able to observe 

 that the beds were cut down to the solid granite, and I 

 have also seen this over an extent of many miles in the bed 

 of the Cavery river. 



Some authors have endeavoured to shew that the gra- 

 nite ranges of India have been produced by mechanical 

 elevation, and have even pretended to have observed the 

 corresponding elevation of the schistous beds towards the 

 hills ; but the latter assertion is contrary to fact, and if it 

 is true that the granitic eminences are all projecting por- 

 tions of the same granitic bed, it does not seem very pro- 

 bable that any of the granitic has been mechanically 

 elevated, unless it is assumed, that the whole mass of the 

 continent has been elevated at once. 



Bakewell* remarks, that in the eastern parts of the 

 United States and in Canada, granite occurs near the 

 surface uncovered by other rocks. This would appear 

 to resemble in some measure the beds of granite in India ; 

 but I am not able to find a similar formation described any 

 where in Europe, where the granite generally occurs as a sort 

 of central cone in the hill ranges, and from this has, in a 

 great measure, arisen the elevation theory. In the map of 



* Geology, page 90. 



