28 FOOTE: GEOLOGY OF THE BELLARY DISTRICT. 



metamorphic granite gneisses must, it appears to me now, be consid- 

 ered true Plutonic rocks— Granites and Syenites. This is in mea- 

 sure a reversion to older petrological views, such as held by Newbold 

 and other geologists of his day. But the reversion is only a partial 

 one, for Newbold looked upon the mass of the granites of the peninsula 

 as by no means the oldest rocks to be met with, but on the contrary as 

 much younger than not only the true gneisses but also than the yet 

 far younger Dharwar rocks, which he called the hypogene schists and 



Newboid's granite describes as upheaved and broken through by the 

 irruptive, not plutonic. gran i te . There can be no doubt that such 



irruptive action of granite never took place on a large scale, and that 

 the vast areas of granitoid rock now seen were really the old founda- 

 tion on which the gneisses, and after them the Dharwar rocks, were 

 quietly deposited. After the deposition of the Dharwars a period of 

 great disturbance supervened, and they were crumpled into great 

 folds with a generally north-west to south-east strike. The underlying 

 granitoids necessarily participated in this great deformation, and to 

 it much of their quasi-bedded structure must be attributed. The 

 period of deformation was succeeded by a period of great, and pro- 

 bably subaerial, denudation, with the result that the granitoid foun- 

 dation was again exposed over great areas. 



The study of the crystalline rocks in Belfary district has shown 

 that they are as a rule very unlike the mass of 



Bellary crystallines fch isses J n the east and SQuth f th 



unhke to eastern gneis- & 



ses.but like Bandel- peninsula, but per contra that they bear a very 



khand crystallines. . J 



strong likeness petrographically to the Bandel- 

 khand gneiss of Central India, which was described by Messrs. Henry 

 Medlicott and W. T. Blanford, in the Manual of the Geology of India, 

 as the oldest known rock series in India. The resemblance is not 

 only a petrographical one in hand specimens, but also a very striking 

 one in the features of the landscapes of parts of these two widely 

 remote regions— a likeness abundantly confirmed by comparison of 

 good photographic views of the granitoids in both tracts. 



" The long narrow serrated edges of quartz reefs " which form such 

 ( 28 ) 



