ORDOVICIAN SYSTEM : LOWER NAUNGKANGYI STAGE. 



67 



one or two specimens of 0. testudinaria were picked up near the 

 crest. 



Lower Naungkangyi Stage. 



The name Naungkangyi was given to these rocks from a village 

 ^ ]at lying two and a half miles to the north of 



Maymyo, because the first remains of true 

 Cystidean plates were found in 1899, at the point where the path 

 leading to this village crosses the low hills north of the railway 

 station. The actual beds in which these fossils were discovered 

 have since been found to belong to the upper part of a great series 

 which has a wide distribution in the Shan States, from which 

 large collections of fossils have been made and submitted for de- 

 scription to Mr. F. R. Cowper Reed. The collections were sent to 

 him in 1903, before the stratigraphical details of the series had been 

 worked out, and for this reason the whole of the fossils weie de- 

 scribed as coming from the Naungkangyi beds ; and the resul ts of 

 his investigations having already been published in the pala?ontolo- 

 gia Indica (New Series, Vol. II, Memoir No. 3), I consider it 

 advisable to retain the name for the whole group of strata from 

 which the fossils were collected, though further investigation has 

 shown that Mr. Reed was perfectly correct in saying that undoubt- 

 edly more than one stage was represented among them. Even 

 now further research will almost certainly show that the dual 

 division which I have made is incomplete, and the present classi- 

 fication must be understood as a rough approximation to the truth 

 only. 



The lower beds of this formation consist of yellow or buff- 

 coloured sandy marls, with strong lenticular 

 jLithoIogical charac- bfmds of coarse]y crysta lline limestone, all 



containing fossils. It is probable that t lie 

 marly beds were originally calcareous, though they may now con- 

 tain no trace of lime, and that their present condition is the result 

 of the leaching out of the calcareous matter by weathering, for they 

 are sometimes fount! to pass into solid limestone when excavated to 

 a sufficient depth. Near Taungkyun (B 5), for instance, a village 

 on the eastern side of Ngwetaung, where Orthis (Dahnanella) elc- 

 gantula Dalman is exceedingly common, it occurs in what appears 

 to be a fine grained pinkish-brown sandstone, but on digging into 



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