i 4 KOOTE: GEOLOGY OF THE BELLARV DISTRICT. 



red colour. The very steep slopes bear little but a thin jungle of 

 small wild date palms (Phoenix farinifera?), around the roots of which 

 are to be seen thousands of large reddish wormcasts where grass 

 ought to be growing. My visit being in the hot weather, the authors 

 of the wormcasts were not to be found ; they had retreated far down 

 into the depths, so their zoological alliance could not then be ascer- 

 tained for want of tools to dig them out. In no other part of the 

 Peninsula have I seen such vast traces of worm work. 



On the north slope of the gorge and about i| miles west by north 

 of the Kumar aswami temple, and a third of a mile east of the centre of 

 the curve the haematites describe, lies an old iron mine known as the 

 " Adar Gani," from which soft but rich haematite is still raised and 

 conveyed on pack-bullocks to two smelting centres, Kannevihalli in 

 Sandur State, three or four miles (by the path) to the north-west, and 

 Shiddagal, 15 miles to the south in Kudligi taluq. 



The bed from which the ore is raised is deeply weathered, and I 

 did not get sight of the unweathered rock, so cannot say what it may 

 be exactly like. The overlying rocky ridge is an ordinary haematite 

 quartzite. Judging by their weather-beaten appearance the old 

 workings must be of considerable antiquity. The new workings now 

 in progress are on a smaller scale than the old ones. They lie on the 

 slope some 2 to 300 feet below that of the Kumaraswami plateau, 

 and paths lead from them up to the temple and the village of Subray- 

 anahalli and down along north-westerly to the foot of the hills to the 

 south of Kannevihalli. 



To the south-west of Subrayanahalli and south and south-east of 

 Tonashagiri hsema- Kumara'swami's temple the southern scarped 

 edge of the plateau is formed by the outcrop of an 

 important haematite quartzite for a distance of some 7 miles. Another 

 bed very similar in size and quality underlies the above bed and keeps 

 parallel with it all along the slight scarp into the Tonashagiri spur. 

 Here both beds descend the eastern slope, and trending from west- 

 north-west to east-north-east cross the mouth of a large and deep 

 ravine (very badly shown in the atlas sheet and not at all in the i-inch 



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