282 Notes on the South Mahratta Country, $c. [No. 160. 



as seen in the more central parts of its area. The trap at the summit 

 of these hills is usually dark, compact, and basaltic, but occasionally 

 contains almond-shaped and spheroidal cavities filled with calce- 

 dony and crystallized quartz, zeolites and green earth. Black crystals 

 of augite are occasionally seen shooting through its structure, which 

 decay sooner than the imbedding rock ; and, falling out in the state of 

 powder, leave numberless cavities on the surface. The rock itself in 

 weathering, resembles iron in rusting, and passes into reddish brown, 

 or coffee-coloured earth, or clay. Cavities occasionally are seen filled 

 with a black earth resembling black bole. 



S. E. boundary of the overlying trap at Banywari. This trap 

 passing into amygdaloid and wacke, and covered with patches of laterite, 

 extends about fourteen and a half miles S. E. from Belgaum, a little to 

 the West of the village of Bangwari, though a few narrow slips are 

 crossed a few miles farther East. The edge of the trap is seen reposing on 

 the hypogene schists at the base of the trap hills close to the village, 

 the ferruginous quartzites with veins of a diaphanous bluish quartz and 

 hornblende schists, are here seen to basset out in nearly vertical strata. 

 From the Southern limit of the overlying trap at Bangwari to the 

 Malpurba. A few hundred yards to the W. of the village of Hoobly, 

 sixteen and a quarter miles S. E. from Belgaum, there is a low hill cover- 

 ed with alluvial soil, in which I found an angular block of quartz with a 

 fibrous structure resembling that of silicified wood, but evidently not of 

 organic origin. The exterior is brown and opaque ; — interior generally 

 translucent with microscopic longitudinal cavities. Minute longitudinal 

 fibres of talc are discoverable with the aid of a lens, having a parallel 

 direction with those of the fibres of quartz, and I have little doubt 

 that the rock owes its fibrous structure to the presence of talc. I have 

 observed a similar structure in the quartzite associated with the talcose 

 and actynolitic schists of Mysore. 



Malpurba River. About three-quarters of a mile from Hoobly the 

 Malpurba is crossed. It was swollen by the monsoon (July) and unfor- 

 dable, having about eighteen feet of water in the main channel. Rate 

 of surface current, two and a half feet per second. Its breadth by a tri- 

 gonometrical observation ninety-five yards. A tumbler-full of the water 



