1845.] Notes on the South Mahratta Country, fyc. 301 



and cast our eyes upon even the present extent of laterite over the sur- 

 face of Southern India, the thickness of its beds (at Beder 200 feet,) its 

 flat-topped ranges of hills, the great gaps effected in their continuity 

 evidently by aqueous causes no longer in action, its often elevated 

 position above the drainage of the country, its imbedding layers of lig- 

 nite from silicified wood, and occasionally water- worn pebbles of dis- 

 tant rocks, we find we can no more attribute its origin to the weather- 

 ing of rocks in situ, or to their present transported detritus, than that 

 of the old sandstones of Europe to the sandy disintegration now in 

 progress of accumulating by rains around the bases of older sandstone, 

 granite, and hypogene rocks, although a mineral resemblance exists as 

 in the case of the true and pseudo-laterites. 



Having said thus much to warrant my placing laterite among the 

 rocks of aqueous and mechanical origin, I shall proceed to notice it as 

 it occurs in the South Mahratta country. It may be remarked, passim, 

 that fossil shells have been scarcely ever found in the tertiary Rhe- 

 nish brown coal beds, though in the vicinity of Bonn large blocks 

 have been met with of a white opaque chert, containing numerous casts 

 of fresh- water shells, which appear to belong to Planorbis rotundatus 

 and Limnea longiscata.* The laterite capping the overlying trap of the 

 South Mahratta country does not appear to have been invaded or 

 altered by it like the brown coal beds. But similar blocks of chert con- 

 taining fresh-water shells, viz. two species of Cypris, three of Unio, and 

 many individuals referable to the genera Paludina, Physa and Limnea, 

 and also Gyrogonites, have been discovered by Mr. Malcolmson and 

 myself entangled in it. 



Near Kulladghi, where it reposes on the limestone, it exhibits 

 undoubted signs of horizontal stratification. It is never seen altered 

 by the granite or trap. West of Kulladghi, near Ooperhutty, beds of 

 a gritty sandstone loosely agglutinated, resembling that into which 

 the laterite passes near Beypoor on the Malabar Coast, rest in a 

 similarly horizontal and unaltered position on the overlying trap ; 

 fragments of which occur in this superimposed sandstone. 



Kunkery Gravel, and Regur. That singular deposit, for so I con- 

 sider the Regur, is superimposed on all the rocks that I have just de- 



* Lyell, Elements, Vol. II, pp. 281-282. 



