254 Geology of the Neilgherries. [No. 12, new series. 



suspended in the element being washed from such sites into more 

 tranquil ones, into basins and hollows in the bottom of the deep, 

 where they have since been covered in by after deposits. Thou- 

 sands of years hence, when nature through the agency of time, 

 attraction, fire, and water, shall have made the bed of the existing 

 sea dry land, and our Continent the ocean's bed, the missing 

 geological groups may appear with their organic remains of shell- 

 fish, corals, zoophytes, vegetables, and the earliest specimens of 

 organic life, in the same manner as the secondary strata are in our 

 day being discovered in basins and small patches. 



At a very remote period in the geological history of our planet, 

 the sea, of which the metamorphic rocks were the bottom, washed 

 over that part of the Indian peninsula where the Neilgherries now 

 stand — at that time not elevated. While the first rudiments of 

 organic life were starting into being in that ocean, some internal 

 convulsion took place, upheaving the mass of syenite forming the 

 main rock of the Neilgherries, and forcing it through the gneiss 

 and hornblende schist at the bottom of the sea ; portions of 

 which rocks were simultaneously raised, some to the surface of the 

 plateau, and others upon the flanks, which positions they tenant 

 to this day. The strata of metamorphic rocks round the foot of 

 the Neilgherries are found to dip from the Hills: in other words 

 they were violently disrupted from their horizontal position by the 

 invading mass, forced upwards, and their elevated ends left lean- 

 ing on the lower sides of the Hills. 



The entire absence of the rocks of the grauwacke group on the 

 Neilgherry Hills, while those of the preceding series exist, indi- 

 cates the elevation of the plateau to have taken place at the time 

 the grauwacke ocean had barely commenced making its deposits. 

 Concealed at present by the vast forests that fringe the foot of the 

 mountain, horizontal strata of the grauwacke rocks may hereafter 

 be discovered reposing on the lower slopes and the inclined meta- 

 morphic rocks. But in case they are never found, w r e shall be 

 compelled to account for their absence in the manner before men- 

 tioned. 



In its passage through the grauwacke ocean, the ascending 



