990 Notes, chiefly Geological, across the Peninsula £No. 156. 



off the water, particularly from the loose siliceous varieties of the soil, 

 before it has had time to fertilize the surface. In the more clayey 

 kinds of the soil the water is longer retained. In the immediate vicinity 

 of Beder the soil does not lie thick, and the trees have a stunted appear- 

 ance, particularly the mango trees that shade most of the Mausolea and 

 Tombs in the precincts. Wherever there is a sufficient depth of soil 

 and capability of retention of moisture, its chemical nature is certainly 

 not against arboreous vegetation as the picturesque banyan tree, in 

 front of the cavern spring in the Farabagh can testify. On the sum- 

 mit of the table land, a few narrow belts of the regur occur outcropping 

 from the alluvium, Voysey counted four well defined zones of the 

 cotton soil on this elevated insulation, between Beder and Shela- 

 pilly, running N. and S. and lying between ridges of laterite, 

 termed by him " Iron clay." The fact of its being thus found on the 

 tops of hills, and covering the bottoms of valleys and plains, at a 

 distance from any river's course, and out of the reach of present in- 

 undations, militates strongly against the theory of the regur being a 

 fluviatile deposit as thought by some. 



The principal wild shrubs growing in the lateritic soil on the surface 

 are the Pulas, the Kutlungi, or Chunqu Cheltu ; the Cassia auricu- 

 lata, the Anona squamosa, Asclepias gigantea, the Bair, (Zizphus 

 Jujuba) the Acacia, the cara thorn, and the small leafed Burratiri. 



Petrographical character of the Beder Laterite. 



The laterite of Beder, generally speaking, is a purplish or brick- 

 red, porous rock, passing into liver brown perforated by numerous 

 sinuous and tortuous tubular cavities either empty, filled, or partially 

 filled with a greyish-white clay passing into an ochreous, reddish and 

 yellowish brown dust ; or with a lilac tinted litheomargic earth. The 

 sides of the cavities are usually ferruginous and often of a deep brown 

 or chocolate colour : though generally not more than a line or two in 

 thickness, their laminar structure may frequently be distinguished by 

 the naked eye. Before the blow-pipe it melts into a black clay at- 

 tracted by the magnet, but is rarely so ferruginous as to entitle it to 

 the character of an ore of iron ; though some of the nodules are picked 

 out, and smelted by the natives. The interior of the cavities has 

 usually a smooth polished superficies, but sometimes mammtllury. and 



