1838.] Alteration of level in Cuteh. 81 



perpetuation ofelevatory movements. It has been before remarked that 

 a destruction of an elevated tract of land, which probably formed a more 

 or less complete series of ridges extending between Rajmahl and the 

 Garrow mountains, may have taken place. 



Considering the geological features of those table-lands and moun- 

 tain chains which extend from Rajmahl to the gulf of Cambay on the 

 one side, and from the Garrow mountains to the Himalaya on the 

 other, it becomes a matter of greater probability that the present breach 

 between Rajmahl and the Garrow mountains was more or less oc- 

 cupied by hills and table-lands, than that this tract of plain escaped 

 all those vicissitudes to which every other feature of our geography has 

 been subject. If this tract, like every other portion of the band which 

 it contributes to form, once presented elevated lands, they would neces- 

 sarily have formed the northern coast of that sea which it is evident 

 from the remains of an estuary in the Caribari hills, as well as from the 

 littoral remains which are spread over the surface of the Kdsya moun- 

 tains, must have occupied the place of the present plains of Bengal. 



If we admit this reasoning to be correct, little ingenuity will be re- 

 quired to account in a satisfactory way for some of the most interesting 

 points in our geology. The destruction of the highlands, which it is 

 thus probable once filled the space alluded to, by subsidence during some 

 great paroxysm, when another tract of equal extent may have been ele- 

 vated ; or by means of a succession of earthquakes, to the destructive 

 effects of which the action of a sea on the one side, and of the waters 

 of the two great rivers on the other, would powerfully contribute. The 

 interesting discoveries now in progress in Fort William of the bones of 

 land animals intermingled with those of amphibious reptiles and frag- 

 ments of mountain limestone, wood, and coal, at a depth of from 370 to 

 450 feet* beneath this portion of the Gangetic delta, seem to refer to 

 some such destruction of dry land on the northern side of Bengal, as 

 that which has been here supposed to have taken placef . 



Should the catastrophe referred to have been sudden, we may easily 

 imagine that a devastating wave would have been occasioned of sufficient 



* I here refer to the experiment of boring for water now carried on in Fort 

 William, in which process the augur, five inches in diameter, brought up nothing 

 but clays, sands, and gravels, until the depth of 350 feet had been attained, when the 

 lower end of a humerus, supposed by Mr. J. Prinsep to resemble that of a hyena, 

 was extracted. Soon after a portion of the rib, a chelonian reptile, with detached 

 fragments of mountain limestone resembling that of the Kdsya mountains, but much 

 corroded, as well as fragments of wood, coal, &c. The depth now attained is 450 

 feet, and the work is still going on with spirit. 



\ Two other fragments of the plastron of a turtle have just been brought up from 

 450 feet depth.— Ed. 

 M 



