60 FOOTE : GEOLOGY OF THE BELLARY DISTRICT. 



great band of granitoid stretching away roughly north-west and south- 

 east for many miles ; but although I made a pretty close net-work of 

 traverses in that part, the evidence I got together was insufficient for 

 me to venture to map such band as an established fact. To work out 

 the details of the metamorphic country under existing circumstances 

 would involve several more years of hard work — work interesting on 

 petrological grounds, but utterly useless economically, unless some 

 enthusiastic petrological amateur should arise in Bellary who would 

 and could devote unlimited time and patience to piecing together the 

 very scrappy information ; but I believe even he would fail and give it 

 up in despair, seeing the immense amount of uncertainty that must 

 prevail as to extensions of bands of varying rocks when so very little 

 is really to be seen. 



The most important show of granite to the north-north-west of 



Bellary is that forming the Kurgod hills, a 

 Kurgod hills. 



group of detached hills crowded together in a 



rather circular cluster, about 4 miles in diameter: they are all very 



similar in appearance and consist of massive grey micaceous granite. 



The hills are very blocky and consequently hard to climb. 



Where freshly broken the rock is a bright, almost silvery grey. 

 In a quarry near Waddahatti, in the same band of rock, but a little 

 south of the hill group, the stone, a very handsome one, quarried very 

 kindly. The rock is often to be seen weathered to great depth, but 

 this must be the work of a great lapse of time ; for, judging by the 

 condition of the walls of sundry temples and of the old fort on the 

 Kurgod hill itself, the stone seems a very durable one. 



Some of the lower hills show very markedly the bare piles of con- 

 fusedly fallen blocks, the " screes " so characteristic of some of the hills 

 in the neighbourhood of Raichur and other places further west in the 

 Raichur doab, and also of some of the hills in the Gudikote group 

 mentioned at page 43. 



The pale grey colour of the fresh rock is seen wherever it is 

 exposed in quarries. 



The Kurgod band extends both north-westward and south-east- 



( 60 ) 



