22 FOOTE : GEOLOGY OF THE BELLARY DISTRICT. 



India up to the establishment of the Geological Survey than all the 

 other writers and investigators of the subject taken together, and his 

 work deserves full notice, for most of it was well done according to 

 the geological views prevalent in his day, and where it is found want- 

 ing it is mostly due to his necessarily incomplete knowledge of coun- 

 tries only traversed and therefore imperfectly examined. 



Misdescription of the topography of the "Sondur" (Soondoor, 

 properly Sandur) State is very good, and so is his account of the rocks 

 as far as it goes. 



The principal point on which his views cannot now be accepted 

 is his assumption that the schistose bands in the peninsula have 

 been brought into their present positions by being broken through 

 by great outbursts of granite. At first sight this appears to be the 

 case, but on closer and more extended examination of the country this 

 idea is found to be untenable, for the old granitoids are nowhere 

 seen to be irrupted into the schists ; on the contrary the lattei 

 were deposited on the former by quiet, long-continued sedimentary 

 action. This is of course a total change of the relative positions of 

 the two rock series •. the granitoids assume their true position as the 

 true fundamental rocks of the country, and the schists are seen to be 

 vastly younger in age than Newbold supposed them to be. 



The granitic intrusions in the schist series which Newbold re- 

 garded as intrusions of the granitoid mass are all found to be intru- 

 sions of much younger pegmatoid veins, and of very small extent 

 and importance. 



The schists are not in the modern sense of the term " hypogene 

 schists ;" they are truly and unmistakably sedimentary formations as- 

 sociated with contemporary trapflows, and whatever metamorphism 

 they have undergone since their deposition is due to great move- 

 ments of the earth's crust, which led to their being bent up into great 

 folds forming huge synclinals and anticlinals. When this had hap- 

 pened a period of vast erosive action ensued, and thousands of feet in 

 thickness of the schistose series were removed and the underlying 

 granitoid foundation was again exposed ; while much of the eroded 

 ( 22 ) 



