TFIE SAGAR DISTRICT. 77 



remarkable for the great extent of range it possesses, for the unique ab- 

 stracted nature of tlie thing itself, and mode of occurrence : — It is ever the 

 same thing at every point of view, void of clays and marls, or any other in- 

 terstratification, it is the same identical mineral, protruding itself through 

 the trap, (where the trap overlies,) in large angular masses set together 

 horizontally without cement ; — a substance of apparent simplicity of com- 

 position, fine grained, hard, vitrified and brittle where it is localized in 

 the midst of the trap of supposed igneous origin, and a free stone of flat 

 even fracture beyond those localities. Highly micaceous and variegated 

 sand-stone slates occur in it in nests, or as continuous strata. The mas- 

 sive rock is itself also often bi-coloured, rarely many coloured. It might 

 be explained and named as the middle division of its formation, but it is 

 not seen to rest on a conglomerate of its own, on the contrary, it is itself 

 seen, at Hirapur, to rest immediately on a conglomerate incident to the 

 granite rock there occurring. 



The lime-stone of the trap is a hard white earthy substance, envelop- 

 ing a few small particles of a yellow calcareous spar. It occurs constantly 

 as a component part of the hills and swells,^ — not of the lower grounds, 

 unless as detritus, in small particles washed down from the hills, when it 

 intermingles with the black mould, and then that soil becomes, from the 

 intermixture, remarkable for its fertility. It deserves attention particu- 

 larly for the semi-calcination, and sometimes more, which it would seem 

 to have undergone, and generally for its defiance of classification, and for 

 the jumble, and apparent dislodgement from original position, which it 

 now exhibits heaped up in the trap : — And, if with these considerations, it 

 be reflected that there is no oolite, no chalk, nothing in a word posterior to 

 lias, the hope may be indulged, that the chert and calcareous dendritic 

 fragments, occasionally found will, together with other to be substantiated 

 facts, eventually establish it as a continuous portion of the neighbouring 



w lias, 



