270 Notes on the South Mahratta Country, §c. [No. 160. 



felspar rock, hornblende schist, jasper, lateritic conglomerate, kunker, 

 ferruginous clay, greyish blue and sand- coloured limestone, sandstone, 

 and calcedony. None of the fragments that had been transported by the 

 current were more than three or four inches in diameter. 



A tumbler-full of the turbid water deposited about l-20th of its 

 bulk of a fine sandy brown sediment, which effervesced with acids ; 

 very different, like those of the Bhiraa, Godavery, Tumbuddra and 

 Cauvery, from the regur, which, as before mentioned, is supposed by 

 some geologists to be a deposit of these rivers. The freshes of the 

 Kistnah do not, according to the testimony of the oldest boatmen, 

 ever overflow the banks more than half a mile ; and its inundations at 

 Danoor, and other places where I have crossed it, rarely spread 

 to a greater extent. These facts argue strongly against the theory 

 of the fluviatile origin of the regur which is seen covering vast flat 

 plains like seas, which extend, I may say, hundreds of miles from the 

 banks of these great rivers. With regard to Christie's theory of 

 its being the detritus of trap rocks, I have before observed that 

 the iron contained in them oxidizes, becomes ultimately reddish 

 or coffee-coloured in weathering, and imparts its colour to the detritus ; 

 and that the alluvium we now see brought down by the Kistnah, 

 Bhima, and Godavery, which rise in and flow over the great trap 

 formation, is of a brown colour, very different from the bluish black 

 of the purest regur. One of the richest and most extensive sheets of 

 regur in Southern India, is that of the Ceded Districts, which is watered 

 by the Tumbuddra, Pennaur, and Hogri rivers, the courses of which on 

 no point touch the trap formation, passing over plutonic and hypogene 

 rocks, sandstone and limestone. If the rich sheets of regur which cover 

 the plains of Trichinopoly, Artoni, and Cuddapah had been derived 

 from the great trap formation, one would naturally expect to find in it, 

 or associated with it, grains or fragments of calcedony, agate, jasper, 

 heliotrope, and other hard minerals so abundant in the overlying trap : 

 but there is no instance on record of such fragments having been found 

 in these regurs. 



The regur is seen too, far above the present drainage levels of the 

 country. At Beder, as already observed, both Voysey and myself 

 found it on cliffs nearly 200 feet above the general level of the sur- 

 rounding country. 



