1836.] the Country between Hyderabad and Nagpur, 205 



The bills, for 44 miles by the road, are arranged in terraces with 

 steep sides and flat summits, rising now and then into conical eleva- 

 tions, with rounded or flat tops, and inclosing narrow valleys, abounding 

 in streams, or small table lands with water every where near the 

 surface. On some of the ridges, the globular basalt becomes columnar, 

 near which no trace of fossils, and hardly any calcedonies have been 

 found. A thick wood and grass jungle, composed of very different 

 plants from those most common on the granite hills, cover the whole 

 tract, and render it unhealthy for the greater part of the year. In a 

 deep valley, about the middle of the hills, where the Kurm or Kurrum 

 river passes through them, the basalt is seen to rest on friable granite, 

 (as near Nirmul to the south and Eicllabad to the north, and at one or 

 two other places,) and a level plain of considerable extent and deep 

 black colour extends to Etchoda to the neighbourhood of the shelly 

 rock. The fossils were first found at Munoor, and between the village 

 and Thitnoor, which is near the top of the Muklegandy ghaut. The 

 most remarkable were found in the beautiful grey chert, which either 

 projects from the basalt in which it is imbedded, or rests in large 

 blocks on the surface. The side on which they rest is remarkably 

 smooth and even, while the others are rough and covered with bivalve 

 shells of great size, and some of them having the epidermis still entire, 

 resembling a recent bed of shells on the sea shore. A few univalves 

 also occur converted into flint, and it is remarkable, that one small 

 bivalve, thus altered, retains its colours. The masses are evidently in 

 situ, and have probably been consolidated by the basalt, with which 

 they are surrounded, or on which they rest. Some specimens exhibit 

 a mixture of sand and mud, merely slightly agglutinated and intermixed 

 with fragments of shells ; the greater part is converted into chert 

 spotted with fragments, or containing the shells in a perfect state ; in 

 other places, the materials have arranged themselves into an enamel- 

 like substance around irregular cavities containing fine crystals of 

 purplish quartz, and in one specimen a formation of calcspar has taken 

 place. Throughout the rock perfect bivalve shells, both closed or open, 

 occur in the situation in which they had lived and been entombed. 

 The most perfect are closed, and some of them are easily separated 

 from the rock to which they are slightly united at a few points only ; 

 they are filled with the stone, mixed with fragments of minute shells, 

 and some are entirely converted into chert, which retains the form 

 even of the ligaments so completely as almost to lead one to expect to 

 be able to open them, 



Between Munoor and Thitnoor, masses of red chert project from 

 amongst the basalt, and contain various shells, mostly univalves of 

 small size, and some of them evidently belonging to fresh water 

 genera. Near to these many fragments of different kinds were found 



