STRATIGRAPH1CAL FEATURES. 29 



ceilings. Thus except for doors and windows no wood whatever is 

 employed in the construction of the houses, no slight advantage in a 

 country where wood fit for timber is so scarce. The same stone is 

 also capable of being fashioned into the beautiful carved work with 

 which the larger houses and palaces in Jodhpur are embellished, the 

 soft reddish colour of the stone adding greatly to the effect of the 

 delicate tracery of the window screens and other ornaments. No one 

 who has seen the interior of the Fort at Jodhpur will readily forget 

 the impression made at once by the massive character of the buildings 

 and the delicacy of the carved screens and cornices so lavishly 

 employed in their ornamentation, and it is difficult at first to realise 

 that the same material can be turned to such different uses. 



The occurrence of two bands of conglomerate in these sand- 

 stones near Sojat and Khatu, already referred to, 1 points to the 

 existence of a shore line in the direction of the Aravalli range at the 

 time of their deposition. Mr. Oldham has already pointed out a the 

 resemblance between the relations of these beds to the Vindhyans on 

 the eastern side of the Aravallis and those of the recent deposits on 

 the northern flanks of the Himalayas with the Indo-Gangetic alluvium. 

 There was apparently no connection whatever between the basins of 

 deposition on either side of the range, and in the absence of fossil 

 evidence it is only on lithological grounds that we can correlate the 

 successive beds in these separate areas with each other. All we can 

 say is that towards the end of the Vindhyan period a local depression 

 was formed in the western side of the Aravallis, in which these sand- 

 stones and limestones were deposited. It is impossible to say how 

 far this basin extended in a north-westerly direction, for the rocks on 

 that side are concealed beneath the Jurassics of Jaisalmir and the 

 sands of the desert. To the south and south-west it did not extend 

 apparently as far as Balotra or Barmer, for in that direction sand- 

 stones of much later age rest directly upon the Malani lavas. But 



1 Supra, p. 26. 



2 Manual, Geology of India, 2nd Edition, p. 106. 



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