759 



Notes, chiefly Geological, across Southern India from Pondicherry, 

 Lat. N. 11° 56', to Beypoor, in Lat. N. li° 12', through the great 

 Gap of Palphautcherry. By Captain Newbold, F.R.S., M.N. I., 

 Assistant Commissioner, Kurnool. No. III., with a plate. 



At Pondicherry, the soil on the surface is sandy ; but the subsoil 

 consists of a blackish stiff clay imbedding existing pelagic shells. A 

 well lately dug near the factory of M. Buirette, exhibits the layers 

 according to the diagram below. 



Immediately to the west of the city the land gently rises into the 

 low eminences called the Red Hills, which are intersected by numer- 

 ous small ravines ; and rugged with inequalities of surface. 



In the valley and rising ground between them and the village of 

 Trivicary, about sixteen miles westerly from Pondicherry, are the 

 Neocomian beds of limestone, and near Trivicary itself, the celebrated 

 fossil wood deposit which has been described elsewhere. The princi- 

 pal shell limestone localities are in the vicinity of the villages of Syda- 

 pett, Carassoo, Coolypett and Vurdavoor. 



Trivicary. — At Trivicary the granite and hornblende schist are 

 again seen, and also at Belpoor, or Vellapur, the kusbah of a taluk of 

 this name in South Arcot, twenty-four miles westerly from Pondicher- 

 ry. These rocks are penetrated by trap ; and on them rest in little dis- 

 turbed stratification, the Neocomian limestone beds, which support, like 

 the nummulitic limestone of Egppt, beds of loose sandstone entombing 

 the large silicified trunks of both dicotyledonous and monocotyledonous 

 trees, the former being by far the most abundant both in the Egyptian 

 Desert, and likewise at Trivicary. In both cases no beds of soil in 

 which the trees formerly grew, no Dirt bed, as in the Portland fossil 

 forest, in which the roots and stems stand erect as they grow, could be 

 traced ; nothing but the bare calcareous beds of the ancient cretaceous 

 and nummuliferous oceans in which they were severally deposited. 



Belpoor. — The face of the country between Trivicary and Belpoor 

 is rough, with ravines and water courses ; with surface blocks and 

 bosses of granite and hornblende schists. These rocks are covered in 

 one or two localities by patches of laterite, and support a sandy soil ; 

 which, in the vicinity of Belpoor, assumes the character of a tolerably 

 fertile loam, producing Indigo, Rice, Tobacco, Raggi, Bajra, Culti, §c. 



5 i 



