284 Notes on the South Mahratta Country, fyc. [No. 160. 



per-like variety, and appearing, as Christie justly describes, as if the 

 latter rock had been broken into a number of small angular fragments, 

 which had been afterwards united by the consolidation of the brown 

 variety. I have seen this singular phenomenon most beautifully ex- 

 hibited in some specimens of a continental agate breccia in the col- 

 lection of Mr. Robert Brown, the celebrated botanist, where angular 

 fragments of beautiful jasper and agate are united together in highly 

 transparent quartz. The pieces of agate and jasper must evidently 

 have been once continuous, and re-united on the spot where they were 

 fractured ; since, in most instances, the sides of the fractured portions 

 are sharp and angular, and could be refitted into each other with per- 

 fect exactness; some are only separated a tenth of an inch by the 

 transparent medium in which they are set. The differently coloured 

 bands identify the fractured portions as having once constituted one 

 integral piece of jasper or agate. 



If the reader can imagine a flat piece of ribbon-jasper or agate laid 

 down upon a table, and both broken, so that the fractured portions 

 shall not be scattered widely from their neighbours, and a layer of mol- 

 ten glass carefully poured over them, he may form an idea of the ap- 

 pearance of these beautiful breccias. He must not expect, however, 

 to see such regularity in rocks on the large scale. 



Towards Darwar the schists pass into chloritic and argillaceous 

 slates and shales, of all shades of white, yellow, red, brown, and green ; 

 interstratified with beds of quartz rock, and the jaspideous rock just 

 described, which generally forms crests and mural ridges on the sum- 

 mits of the hills. The latter is often found in irregular masses, ob- 

 scurely stratified ; but, in most cases, as remarked already, in regularly 

 interstratified beds with the clay and chloritic schists conformable 

 both in dip and direction. 



The lustre of this rock is sometimes equal to that of pitchstone, and 

 sometimes dull and earthy ; the fracture flat conchoidal, in the more 

 compact varieties ; splintery and slightly granular in the less compact. 

 The Kittoor and Darwar schists bear evident marks of the alternation 

 produced by the intrusion of granite, and trap dikes seen occasional- 

 ly at the bases of these hills ; and as in the Ceded Districts, and other 

 localities on the hypogene area, of Southern India, affords striking illus- 

 trations of the correctness of McCulloch's remark on the formation 



