XXIV 



Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



year that Mr. Medlicott landed in India. In this remarkable work lime- 

 stones from every formation in India, from metamorphic to the Bagh and 

 Intertrappean beds, are included in the " Oolitic Series." An equally 

 remarkable confusion is shown upon Greenough's Geological Map of India. 



Nothing had been done to clear up the nebulous condition of Indian 

 Geology before 1854. Henry Medlicott's first season in India was signalized 

 by the earliest and most important step in the classification of the 

 Peninsular rocks, when he and his brother separated the Vindhyans north of 

 the Nerbudda Valley from the Gondwanas to the south. The name Vindhyan 

 was given by Dr. Oldham, who, however, when announcing the discovery,*" 

 stated that the separation had been made by the Medlicotts before he visited 

 the country. In the first memoir he wrote, in Vol. 2 of the Memoirs, Henry 

 Medlicott reduced the whole mass of Vindhyan, Infra- Vindhyan, and Bijawar 

 rocks that extend throughout Bundelkhand to a sequence which has received 

 no great subsequent alteration, the principal change, perhaps, being in the 

 substitution of the term Lower Vindhyans for Sub-Khymores. This masterly 

 paper, though published in a most imperfect condition, ill-arranged, and not 

 very clearly written, was not only the beginning of our accurate knowledge of 

 the Vindhyan and Infra- Vindhyan rocks, but laid a firm foundation on which 

 much has since been built. From his earliest work to his latest, these 

 wonderful azoic rocks of India were Mr. Medlicott's especial favourites, 

 perhaps because all the knowledge of them was derived from purely physical 

 observations, and not interfered with by organic remains, which in the later 

 Gondwanas have not always proved an accurate indication of the age of the 

 beds or their relations to each other. Throughout his writings in India, and 

 throughout the Annual Beports issued during his Directorship, point after 

 point is brought up tending to the correlation of these formations in various 

 parts of India, and showing the relations between Karnul and Cuddapah, 

 Kaladghi, Gwalior, and many other similar rocks on the one hand, and the 

 Vindhyan and Bijawar on the other. 



His next great work was the arranging of the rocks of the Lower 

 Himalayas in the Simla and neighbouring area and of the Siwalik rocks and 

 their associates at the base of the mountains, and the sketching of the 

 geological history of the Himalaya range on a definite geological basis. The 

 first has been one of the most difficult questions in Indian geology, and 

 although the work was commenced in 1855, it cannot be regarded even 

 now as nearly solved. The Tertiary Himalayan Beds have, however, been 

 regarded as fairly classified since Mr. Medlicott's Memoir was published 

 in 1864. The important observations made in this Memoir are essentially 

 physical. The demonstration that -Himalayan elevation is shown by the 

 relations of the Lower Nummulitics and the older hill rocks not to have 

 begun before Tertiary times, and the beautiful illustrations proving the 

 permanence of the great river valleys by their coincidence with the 



* ' Journ. Asiat. Soc. Bengal,' 1856, vol. 25, p. 250., and more clearly in c Mem. Geol. 

 Surv. Ind.,' vol. 2, p. 304. 



