56 APPENDIX. 



In tlie above references tliere is not as clear a relation as Avas 

 given in connection witli Brazil ; but the geology of the region 

 is not in some respects so settled as to determine exactly where, 

 in relation to other countries, the Vindhyan rocks of India 

 belong. Enough, however, has been produced to show that the 

 Mahadeva beds are younger than the Damoodah, which clearly 

 correspond with our own Upper Coal-measures, and that the 

 Vindhyan beds were faulted and elevated and denuded before the 

 deposition of the Talcheer beds that are still lower than the 

 Damoodah. 



Under such circumstances it follows that there is probably no 

 very close connection between diamond beds in India at distant 

 localities, and very little to justify the supposition that all, if any, 

 of the Indian diamond deposits can be exactly synchronous with 

 older Pliocene. 



I have not yet mentioned two very important and interesting 

 memoirs, by Messrs. Ilislop and Hunter, published in the 10th 

 and 11th volumes of the Quarterly Journal of the Greological 

 Society, on the Greology of the Nagpur territory. Differing in 

 opinion from them as to the age to which they assign what they 

 term the great Jurassic formation, which extends over enormous 

 areas and comprises the Coal Fields of Central India and Bengal, 

 I would still accept their statements with the greatest respect. 

 They regard the base of the Peninsula as formed of gneiss, granite, 

 syenite, pegmatite, mica-schist, and quartz ; but these are not all 

 of anterior date to the sedimentary formations. 



Over these occur the Coal-bearing rocks, the upper part of 

 Avhich are the sandstones, partly transmuted, which have been 

 already alluded to, and which other authorities regard as the 

 source of the diamond. 



Over these beds comes the lower trap rock, which is compact 

 beneath and vesicular at the top, with cresting patches of nodular 

 trap. These traps enclose in places a thin sedimentary formation 

 of Tertiary age, which has an uninterrupted range of 1,050 miles 

 in one direction, and of 660 miles in the other. Its age has 

 I'elations Avith the Eocene of Europe. Notwithstanding the order 

 presented in various parts of this large region, the authors con- 

 sider the various trap rocks as all younger than these beds, the 

 lower having in fact been the younger. The trap they hold to 

 have flowed into and over and to have altered the lowest of these 

 Tertiary beds, which were deposited in a series of great lakes of 

 no great depth. 



Above the trap another series of beds occurs, the lowest of 

 which is Latcrite, a well-known term to those who are conversant 

 with Eastern Asiatic geology. In this, the authors state, occur 

 the diamond mines east of Nagpur. They dispute the assertion 

 that the diamonds belong to the transmuted sandstones below the 



