SUBAERIAL FORMATIONS AND SOILS. 187 



of fertile soil, and in two cases at least overwhelming the villages 

 themselves. This was at Jiraganur, about 3 miles below the Haggari 

 Railway bridge, where the ruined village temple still protrudes from 

 out of the sand and at Bodurti, a village 8 miles from Honur mentioned 

 by Newbold as having been totally buried about 13 or 14 years before 

 his visit to Honur in 1839. It was completely covered by the sand 

 drift with the exception of the tops of the walls. Of late years the 

 advance of the sands has been greatly checked at various points along 

 the river by plantations of casuarina trees. 



Newbold * states that the season when the sands advance most 

 is during the months of June, July and August, when the south-west 

 monsoon is at its highest. He is very probably right, but I can from 

 personal observation add that the westerly wind is very busy moving 

 the sands eastward already much earlier in the year. 



The line of dunes is not an unbroken one in the lower third of 

 its length from the Moke* ford downwards. The greatest width 

 of the sands is about } of a mile as at the buried village of Jiraganur, 

 and east of the Moke* ford and again in the patch N. W. of old 

 Guliem (Gooleum), elsewhere the width may average about i of a mile. 

 The dunes rarely attain to an elevation of 20 feet, and none exceed 30 

 feet as far as my observation went. 



The only other patch of blown sands worth noting is on the right 



Blown sands of the bank of the Tungabhadra between it and the 

 Tungabhadra valley. vi ,j age of Ho , al Jn Hadaga , u taluq< j t ; s of 



no great height, but is remarkable for the markedly reddish tinge of 

 its colour, which reminds one somewhat of the impure teri sands 

 to the south of Ramnad, where they begin to mix with the whiter 

 sands of the coast line of dunes. The cause of this unusually red 

 tinge for these river sand-dunes is not obvious. 



Small wreaths of blown sand, too small in size to be termed 

 dunes, occur here and there scattered about on waste sandy tracts on 

 the red soil area of Kudligi taluq. 



1 Notice of the River-dunes on the banks of the Hogri and Pennaur, Madras JI. 

 Lit. and Sci. Vol. IX, p. 309. 



( 187 ) 



