30 F00TE: GEOLOGY OF THE DEL1.ARY DISTRICT. 



Vaige" river. A yet more southerly inlier occurs in south-western 



Tinnevelly. 



The gneisses of the Nilgiri plateau bear a greater resemblance 



to those forming the Salem mountains (includ- 

 The Salem gneiss. . . -»,...,. ,-,, 



ing the ratcna Malais, Koli Malais, ohevaroys, 



Tainanda Malais, and Kalroyen Malais, which extend north-north- 

 eastward into the Javadi hills) and constitute an apparently younger 

 (upper) division, to which the name of the Salem division may not 

 unsuitably be applied for the present at least, until it may possibly 

 be correlated with the Bengal division, after the intervening large 

 Archaean area in Vizagapatam, Ganjam, and Orissa shall have been 

 geologically surveyed. 



The Southern Ghats, which include the Travancore hills, the Ana- 

 malais, and the Palani (Pulney) mountains, together with the schis- 

 tose gneisses of Coimbatore district, will most probably be shown 

 to belong to the Salem gneiss. 



To this upper division may very appropriately be assigned 

 the very peculiar schistose gneisses of the Kistna and Godavery 

 districts (described as the Bezwada gneiss by Dr. King and myself, 

 when writing on the geology of the Eastern Coast), unless, indeed, 

 it should eventually be shown that a third division ought to be 

 established to include these very remarkable gneisses. 



The relation of the Bellary granitoid and the Salem gneiss series 

 is very obscure, and the boundary lines between them have yet to 

 be worked out. 



No special classification of the crystalline rocks .lying within 

 Bellary district was found practicable, the chief obstacle being the 

 very great extent of the spaces between well-marked bands in hilly 

 tracts, where the surface is wholly or mainly concealed by the wide and 

 unbroken spreads of regur, and in some parts, though to a lesser degree, 

 by those of sandy red soils, and by shingle spreads in others. The 

 information to be obtained from isolated small out-crops, or shallow 

 exposures in small stream beds, is rarely to be trusted, as in the vast 

 majority of cases the rock is in a state of advanced decomposition. 



( 30 ) 



