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



quartz, hornblende, actynolite, and other of the hardest fragments of 

 the hypogene and granitic rocks are occasionally seen in the sandstone, 

 but rarely pieces of gneiss or of the granite mass itself, — a circumstance 

 indicating great trituration of its components prior to consolidation. 

 With regard to mineral character, the limestones and sandstones of the 

 S. Mahratta country resemble those of the Devonian groupe per- 

 haps more than any other, but it has been already remarked what little 

 reliance is to be placed on this test of the age when unsupported by 

 other evidence ; more particularly as organic remains have been 

 discovered in the sandstones of Hydrabad and Nagpore, supposed to 

 be identical with those of the S. Mahratta country, which would 

 indicate a more recent era. These fossils are a hollow compressed body, 

 of a deep black colour and compact structure, the centre of which is 

 filled with sandstone, and supposed to be a vegetable by Mr. Mal- 

 colmson, who discovered it in the sandstone hill of Won. The others 

 from the sandstone in the vicinity of Nagpore were discovered by 

 Lieutenant Munro, H. M. 36th, and are impressions of plants which re- 

 semble the Glossopteris Danceoides of the Burdwan coal field, as figured 

 by Royle. With these plants impressions were found, which Mr. 

 Malcolmson conceives to be not unlike those of the large bony scales 

 of the sauroid fish of the carboniferous and old red sandstone rocks, 

 especially those of the latter. Mr. Malcolmson showed me these speci- 

 mens at Bombay, and I agree with him that these last impressions were 

 too imperfect to justify any opinion as to their real nature. As he 

 justly remarks, in a subject so new, and I may add as likely to afford so 

 important a key to the classification of the rocks of India with those 

 of Europe, no indication should be overlooked. The occurrence of a 

 Glossopteris in strata imbedding organic remains of the Devonian 

 groupe, would be novel and interesting. 



I am not aware that the diamond, a marked mineral characteristic 

 of the sandstones of the Ceded Districts occurs in the Eastern Ghauts 

 from the Pennaur to north of the Kistnah, and which as far as a peculiar 

 mineral characteristic can perhaps identify rocks, identifies it with the 

 diamond sandstones of Nagpore, in which the fossils alluded to as dis- 

 covered by Mr. Munro occur, and those of Punnah in Bundlecund, 

 has hitherto been discovered in the sandstone of the S. Mahratta 

 country. A bed of anthracite three feet broad and 200 feet long, has 



