OCT.— DEC. 1856.] 
of the Southern Division. 
91 
The face of the country is that of a level, and in some places an 
undulating plain ; lower in most cases at the foot of the mountains 
and vast rocks, which rise abruptly from the surface, than in other 
places. As most of the vallies are occupied with tanks and ponds 
for irrigating the country, ravines and deep water-courses are very 
few. 
The soils are the regur, or black cotton in the north, west and 
south, and in small patches in some other places ; the red sandy 
and red irony in parts of the Talooks of Sevagunga, Maloor, Ram- 
gherry and Tadicomboo, apd the light sandy and gravelly on the 
sea-shore and in vicinity of the rivers, and a few other places ; and 
the dark-brown vegetable soil confined mostly to the hills and val- 
lies of the mountains. These various soils, with the exception of 
the last mentioned, contain a portion of clay, but this is so free 
from it that water penetrates through it nearly as freely as througli 
sand, or ashes, and when burned it falls to pieces like so much 
earth. 
The alluvium beneath the soil partakes much of the nature of 
the underlaying rock except in the vicinity of the sea and the ri- 
vers. There it is either the fine-washed sand mingled with land, 
fresh water, or marine shells, or the fluviatile and lacustrine depo- 
sits. A deposit resembling the loess of the Rhone, and the silt and 
crag of some pools of England are met with in various places. 
In noticing more particularly the features of this region we find, 
that in the northern part of the Trichinopoly District, in the black 
soil through which that remarkable bed of fossil shells and Crusta- 
cea passes, and in the vicinity of the Vellar are beds of a pure ba- 
salt, both in nodular masses and in large blocks, and as it breaks 
with a smooth and even fracture, it is used, to a considerable ex- 
tent, for building purposes. Adjoining this in the north-east are 
beds of laterite resting upon syenitic granite. And in the north- 
west the plains are much variegated by the out-croppings of this 
underlying granite, which in some places passes into syenite and 
greenstone, and rises in other places into hills and mountains that 
extend westward beyond the boundary of the District, and south- 
ward to within a few miles of the Cauvery. Among these hills is 
