cxvi Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [Nov. 1845. 



his map and note will, as he advises, follow as soon as completed, a portion of the hilly 

 country to the west of Rhotasghur still remaining- unsurveyed. Lieut. Sherwill has also 

 sent us specimens of the curious sandstones, of which his descriptions and figures will 

 appear in the 163rd No. of the Journal. 



Mr. Rechendorf, a German gentleman educated as a Zvlining Engineer, has obliged us 

 with a paper on the Geology of upper India, which he has had some extensive, though 

 brief opportunities of examining, having travelled up from Bombay to Ferozepore, and 

 then by the hills before visiting Calcutta : this paper is now in the hands of Dr. Roer, 

 who has kindly undertaken its translation. 



Capt. Abbott, B. A. has also obliged us with a paper on certain specimens of splintered 

 agates found in clay strata bordering on the Nurbudda, the origin of which is probably 

 to be sought for in the fissures of the rocks, occasioned by movements of upheaval or 

 subsidence ; unless indeed we admit of any glacier agency so near the equator, or that 

 the agates might possibly be fractured by the agency of torrents and the grinding of 

 boulders in them, or at cascades, and subsequently carried by inundations with other 

 debris to form part of the till deposited on the banks of the river. 



By Mr. Rechendorf, I have forwarded to professor Ehrenberg at Berlin, twenty-four 

 bottles of our river water, being twelve bottles taken (one in each month of the year) in 

 the middle of the river at Calcutta, and at Burisal, so as to enable him to compare the 

 infusoriae of the sediments of the great tropical rivers with those of European ones. 



Major General Cullen, resident at Cochin, forwards us from Cochin a small box by 

 dawk, and since two chests by sea, of a limestone deposit from the Breakwater at Cochin. 

 I have not yet had time to examine the specimens. The General's letter is as follows : — 



H. Piddington, Esq. 



My dear Sir, — I do not know if, in my last note to you, I made any mention of a dis- 

 covery I had recently made in this vicinity of a calcareous deposit, I believe the first 

 instance of the kind that has yet been noticed on any part of the coast of Malabar though 

 frequently searched for. Indeed, the absence of all calcareous deposit below or along* 

 the top of the ghat has become almost proverbial. 



I have met with traces of a calcareous infiltration— in the seams of a kind of greenstone 

 rock near Trevandrum, but that is the only other instance I have heard of,— towards Cape 

 Comorinkunker appears, and you know perhaps that that deposite abounds on the east side 

 of the ghat atTinevelly. Captain Newbold I believe found nummulite nodules somewhere 

 between Mangalore and Sedashigheer,but not I believe, in situ, probably Pattimar ballast. 

 My notice was first drawn to the present deposit by the excavations made for canal work. 

 Some small flat pieces of stone were brought to me, some of them of rather singular form. 

 I immediately perceived they were calcareous. I ordered the search to be continued, and 

 a little deeper they came to large thick slabs of a coarse, dark, greenish limestone, at first 

 supposed to be a disintegrating greenstone or hornblende slate. It, I however immediate- 

 ly ascertained to be limestone also. Instead of blue stiff mud or clay, the more general 

 stratum, the soil here was a dark greenish sand, in fact the detritus of the slabs, a calca- 

 reous sand, a most singular and interesting appearance. I fancied that the slabs had the 

 usual direction, N. W. and S. E. and I ordered corresponding search.* I recollected 



* At first the existence of limestone here appeared to me so very problematical, that I 

 could hardly believe it. in situ, I suspected that the slabs must have been remains of some 



