ARCH^AN AND PLUTONIC ROCKS. 29 



frequent and striking a feature in the Bandelkhand landscape are 

 nearly as common in Bellary district and other parts of the Ceded 

 districts, and they not unfrequently attain to heights of 500 to 600 

 feet and upwards above the general level, like those in Central India. 

 The granitoids in Bellary district and the adjacent districts of Ananta- 

 pur, Karnul, and Kadapa are also traversed by very numerous trap- 

 dykes of great size and length, which often rise into bold crests and 

 ridges forming very conspicuous objects in the landscape. The 

 relation of these to the granitoids and to the great quartz reefs is 

 precisely the same as in the typical Bandelkhand area. 



A further noteworthy fact, in perfect agreement with the geologi- 

 cal structure of the Bandelkhand gneiss, is the total absence, as far 

 as our present knowledge goes, of limestones in the granito-gneissic 

 region of Bellary, the South -Mahratta country, the Raichur Doab, and 

 the districts of Anantapur, Karnul, and Kadapah. Yet another 

 point, in which the granitoid gneisses of Bandelkhand and Bellary 

 show a strong similarity, is in the extraordinary rarity of accessory 

 minerals — a point in which they differ much from the gneisses in the 

 Eastern Carnatic. 



There cannot to my mind be any doubt that the granitoid rocks 

 within the region above defined should be regarded as belonging to 

 the Bandelkhand or older division of the great Archaean system of 

 India, despite that they are divided from each by hundreds of miles 

 of overlying strata of younger formations (chiefly the flows of the 

 great Deccan trap system). 



The recognition of the existence of this older division of the 

 gneissics in the tracts just named necessitates the mention of its 

 occurring also in other parts of the south of the peninsula, to wit, in 

 great parts of Mysore, in the central and western taluqs of 

 North Arcot, and in the Baramahal division of Salem district. 



Inliers of identical character appear also in the centre of the Kistna 

 and the south-west of the Nellore districts, in the south-east of North 

 Arcot, and the centre of South Arcot ; also in the south of Trichino- 

 poly district, the Puddukotta State, and part of Madura north of the 



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