GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF INDIA. 247 



the price of these publications, and that of the " Records," were 

 lowered. 



During 1878 the survey lost Mr. Walter Lindsay WiHson, who 

 died on the 23rd of March 1878. He had joined the Indian service 

 in March 1857, having at that time been for some years Senior 

 Geologist on the Geological Survey of Ireland ; the training he had 

 there received was very marked in the finished neatness of his 

 field maps in India. His place was taken by Mr. 0. L. Griesbach, 

 F.G.S., who -was appointed by the Secretary of State in the latter 

 part of the same year. 



The great tract of Gondwana rocks, occupying the lower half 

 of the Godavari valley, is conveniently divisible into two areas, 

 separated physically by that portion of the Eastern Ghats sometimes 

 called the Golconda range of mountains, and geologically in that 

 the upper division of this formation is in great part of marine 

 origin to the south of the hills, while there are only river and 

 lacustrine members of the series in the upper part of the valley. 

 The portion below the Ghats, or in other words the coastal region 

 corresponding to the lower division of the Godavari district, is 

 described by Mr. King in Yol. XVI. of the " Memoirs." The 

 country mainly consists of the deltaic deposits of the Godavari and 

 the Kistna, rising gradually amid groups of small hills up to the 

 Kaurkonda-Papakonda range. It is a puzzle how the Godavari 

 river came to cut its way down through a 2,000 feet high range of 

 crystalline rocks (where the famous " gorge" of the Godavari lies), 

 when it might have deviated and flowed through the more easily 

 worn sandstone to the south-west near Ash waraopet, where the great 

 gap (crossed by the Kistna) in the continuity of the Eastern Ghats 

 commences. The economic geology of this region is of no great 

 importance, though old diamond workings exist in the sandstone 

 near Muleli, west of Ellore. 



In 1879, Mr. King's researches were prosecuted among the 

 Gondwana rocks in the Pranhita-Godavari area, and the detailed 

 account is contained in Vol. XVIII. of the " Memoirs." The 

 Godavari valley for a considerable length of its lower course 

 traverses a great area of Gondwana rocks, which connects the 

 Xagpur or Kamthi and Chanda fields of these with the patch of the 

 same great formation on the Coromandel coast. The Chanda rocks 

 extend southward by the Wardha river valley, and so with the 

 Pranhita river to its junction with the Godavari, whence they are 



