ALLUVIAL DEPOSITS. 1 83 



No one who has resided long in India and has watched atmos- 

 pheric phenomena with any degree of care can have failed to observe 

 such local storms of great violence, and if caught in one of them, the 

 experience then gained will lead to ready and perfect comprehension 

 of the remarkable extent to which local debacles modify the distri- 

 bution of detrital matter far and wide over the face of the country. 



To the action of such local storms we may, I think, safely attribute 

 the scattering over the surface of the country of isolated beds of 

 gravel whose existence cannot be attributed to the action of the local 

 rivers and nullahs. Examples of such are the cinnamon-coloured 

 shingles occurring to the north-west and east of Kapgal in the 

 Bellary taluq. These quartzose (? quartzite or vein quartz) shingles 

 lie on the surface of the cotton soil at heights never attained by the 

 flood waters of the streams now draining the country. Other ex- 

 amples of the kind are the shingle beds composed of Dharwar debris 

 to be seen to the north-west of Soma Samudra and Yerra Inglagy. 

 At the present time the rivers in Bellary district deposit but 

 very little debris. They seem rather to be en- 

 rive[s SCnt aCti ° n ° f thC tirel y engaged in cutting their channels deeper. 

 The only depositing that now takes place 

 happens in the rare event of floods so high that they top the pre- 

 sent banks and leave a sediment behind, but as such high floods 

 occur but rarely and are of short duration, the amount of deposit 

 made is very slight and consists as a rule of a reddish slime (which 

 dries into a pale reddish loam) or else of fine reddish sand. Within 

 the existing beds the action of the rivers is mostly a purely erosive 

 one. Sand-banks and mud-banks do occasionally form of a height 

 sufficient to get covered with grass and tamarisk bushes, but they do 

 not acquire sufficient elevation to become true islands standing well 

 over ordinary flood levels and offering surfaces suitable for habitation 

 and cultivation by man. 



One interesting example of high-level deposition within compara- 

 tively recent times was noted on the north 

 levefcf of v cent h,gh " bank opposite to Ham pasagara, where a thin 

 bank of reddish sand loam from 3 to 4 feet thick 



( 183 > 



