and Auxiliary Royal Asiatic Society. 



187 



•owing to a process of concentric exfoliation, I have described elsewhere. 

 True erratic boulders, like those I have seen in the North of England, 

 I have neve?' met within India, and looked for them in vain on the shores 

 of the Red Sea, Mediterranean, in Egypt, and Arabia Petrsea. Their ab- 

 sence in these regions, tropical and sub-tropical, tends to corroborate 

 the theory of floating ice-bergs, having been mainly instrumental in 

 the transport of the vast masses of debris, and vast erratic blocks we see 

 "*n the northern parts of Europe, It is well known that the usual course 

 taken by ice-bergs from the confines of the Polar circles of eternal conge- 

 lation is towards the temperate latitudes, and that they dissolve and dis- 

 charge their burthen of earthy and rocky debris, long be'fore they can ar- 

 rive at the hot regions of the equator. Hence this comparative rarity of 

 the boulder formation in warm countries. Passing south of the equator, 

 we again find the boulder formation, in the cold regions of Chili and Pa- 

 tagonia. We may find drift pebbles, here and there resting on rocks of 

 a different description in S. India, but as far as my observation ex- 

 tends, true boulder beds, similar to those of N. Europe and the more 

 southerly latitudes of America, do not exist either here or in those parts of 

 Egypt and Arabia, which I have visited. However as the observations of 

 a single individual are not to be supposed as sufficient to disprove 

 the possibility of such formations existing in S. India, and in order 

 to carry out General Briggs' wishes to the utmost, I have enclosed 

 the copy of his queries and remarks for submission to our Physical Com- 

 mittee, or the Society at large, requesting that they would have the kind- 

 ness to communicate any information in their power on this interesting 

 subject, either directly to General Briggs, General Fraser, or to myself. 

 Would you kindly submit them through the usual channel for the remarks 

 of the Committee. 



"Mr. Piddington, I perceive, No. 61 of the Bengal Journal Proceedings 

 Asiatic Society, January, 1844, p. 6, has at once pronounced the organic 

 bodies in the diamond limestone interstratified cherts nummulites. I ven- 

 tured only so far as to class them among Foraminifera, and this still with 

 hesitation. I sent a specimen up to General Fraser requesting he would 

 apply his powerful microscope to the elucidation of their structure. The 

 enclosed drawing is the result. It will be seen that the convolute cavity, 

 divided into cells spirally arranged of the nummulite is by no means clear- 

 ly shown. Perhaps the septa dividing the cells may be more distinct in 

 the specimens I have forwarded to the Society and to yourself. Would 

 you kindly submit them with the drawing to the Society, or the Committee, 

 with the request that any Member possessing a good microscope will ex- 

 amine and give a faithful drawing of the interior structure of the best de-- 



