THE SAGAR DISTRICT. 55 



kinds, whether compact or amygdaloidal, whether they are basalts or 

 wackens, for their colour is black, or black only slightly modified : — The 

 structure is always massive, — a laminated specimen could not be obtained. 



But the principal rock, throughout this formation, is that represented 

 by No. 5. It is what is termed a compact indurated wacken, in colour 

 black, with a very distinct brownish tinge. When first fractured, its sur- 

 face has a much more glimmering appearance, than the basalt, but unlike 

 the basalt, exposure to the atmosphere, soon changes its surface into an 

 earthy dirty whitish colour. It is often very tough, very refractory under 

 the hammer, but its fracture is flat and dull, — not sharp and splintery, or 

 approaching to the conchoidal. It occurs in pieces, in length, breadth, 

 and depth, pretty nearly the same, a foot in measurement, and which are 

 set closely together, so as to form something like a stratum in the hills,^ — • 

 or in the vallies as the base of the basaltic mould; and it is also the pre- 

 dominating variety in those hills, which are of such constant and general 

 occurrence, consisting of large rounded and angular masses, thrown up to- 

 gether in the utmost confusion, with very little clayey matter intermixed; 

 — and lastly, it may often be seen abstracted and alone, in something like 

 large uniformly ovate masses, having a brownish and wrinkled exterior, 

 and imbedded in a sombre reddish brown clay No. 5, is taken from a hill 

 of the last kind. 



No. 6 will exemplify the same where set as a stratum. 



No. 7 is also the same kind of wacken, but it is decomposing with a 

 nucleus of undecomposed black matter, and the superficial and decom- 

 posing part is a light yellowish brown; — farther stages of decomposition 

 might easily have been shewn to where the whole matter is changed to a 

 greyish colour, and chips off into fragments like pieces of a small bomb- 

 shell. 



