337 



Geology of the South of hidia. 



[Oct. 



was, that he is in the habit of taking small quantities of lime 

 " to the neighbouring villages for sale, and in his travels has an 



eye to tiie geological features of the country as far as linie- 

 " stone is concerned: — passing this field some nine or ten mouths 



afo he was struck with the very different appearance and 

 " colour of the stones, — and hence the discovery of these fossil 

 " shells." 



" The nintrix of these shells appears to be indurated clay, and 

 " the forms of the shells are in most cases replaced with silicious 

 " matter; they resemble, as Dr. Spilsbury suggests, the bucci- 

 " num and other shells in the Gawelgerh range of hills described 

 " by Voysey, (Gleanings, vol. I, page 356.) 



The Sagar shells discovered by Dr. Spry, are of one species, 

 *' all left-handed, and precisely the same as those discovered 

 " by Dr Spilsbury, sili( ified in indurated clay, near Jabalp{ir, 

 " and described in the Proceedings of the Society for April, 

 " (p, 005); these however are in their natural state, imbedded 

 " in a loose cellular wacken, the white granular appearance of 

 " which is derived from silex in a white crunibling state, lining 

 " the numerous cells of the matrix as is often observed in the 

 geodes of zeolite and heliotrope. Both above and below the shell 

 stratum are beds of wacken, a basaltic clay, becoming harder 

 below, and more earthy above ; the surface being the common 

 " black cotton soil, abounding throughout the trap district. The 

 same shell deposit will probably be found to extend over a 

 ** considerable field." 



*' On turning to Dr. Voysey's description of the shell stratum 

 " in the Gawilgerh hills^ a perfect identity is observable in the 

 " thickness and nature of the superincumbent and subjacent beds 

 " of wacken and basalt: the shells however are described by him 

 *^ as conus or voluta, but as they were much broken and compress- 

 ed, they were probably not easily recognized, and may have 

 been after all identical with the present shells. They bear some 

 ** resemblance to the common ampullaria of the tanks and jheels 

 " of upper India, described by Mr. Benson, Gleanings 1. p. 

 " 265, The fossil shell however has some specific distinctions, in 

 its more oval form, and the constant reversion of the whorls. 

 Should it turn out to be an ampullaria^ it will be a proof of 

 fresh water lakes, co-existent with the emission of the upper 

 " Sagar trap, and perhaps with the fossil bone deposit, and as 

 ** both by Voysey's testimony and by that of Dr. Spry the shell 



