1864.] 



Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 



443 



the Mahadeva hills as stated, but on the top. There is, evidently, 

 therefore, nothing trustworthy in either of these statements, as bear- 

 ing on the question of what group of rocks the fossil in question was 

 derived from. Immediately on seeing the announcement of the dis- 

 covery, I wrote to the Rev. S. Hislop of Nagpur, asking him to make 

 very particular enquiries as to the locality, and stating my belief that 

 it would be found not to be from the Mahadevas : and, with the per- 

 mission of the Society, I will read an extract from his letter in reply, 

 the last, I regret to say, of a long and valued correspondence I had 

 with him. His intimate acquaintance with the rocks in his district, 

 gives special value to his observations. 



"Mr. Hislop writes — (under date 14th August, 1863) speaking of 

 the fossil in question — < On the footpath leading to the Eori-ghat, 

 Major Gowan met with a detached block of sandstone, bearing the 

 impression of the ribs and vertebral column of an animal, which the 

 natives around were in the habit of calling a fish, but which our 

 countryman more properly considered a reptile. The matrix having 

 been found out of position, it was difficult for the discoverer, or the 

 European officer who was requested subsequently to tread in his foot- 

 steps, to ascertain to which sandstone strata it had belonged, whether 

 to the great pile of arenaceous beds that constitute the mountain 

 mass, or to the few that lie below. This is no longer a matter of 

 uncertainty. I have had a good deal of experience in the various 

 kinds of sandstone that occur in this province, and the sample from 

 near Bijori I saw at once belonged, not to the Mahadeva formation 

 but to the lower Damuda group. There was an absence of all tenden- 

 cy to ferruginous septa, so characteristic of the former, and an abun- 

 dance of mica so uncommon in the former, but so frequent in the 

 latter. In splitting some of the laminae produced by the mica, I de- 

 tected carbonaceous matter, such as is found between the layers of the 

 Lower Damuda sandstone. There can he no question then, that the 

 slab is from the inferior strata of our Indian Coal formation' 



" Mr. Hislop proceeds to describe the characters of the Eeptile in 

 question, and to note the particulars which he observed when clearing 

 out the fossils from its matrix. But these are matters relating to its 

 natural history, and my only object now is, to place on record the 

 fact, that the specimen in question had almost certainly, nothing 

 whatever to say to the ' Mahadeva' group. 



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