26 Mr. R. Bruce Foote on the occurrence of 



By the upsetting or foundering of these during sudden 

 squalls, numbers of Implements in the best state of preser- 

 vation may have sunk to the bottom to be imbedded in the 

 mud-banks. The fact of these ancient men having possessed 

 axes and adzes (?) certainly lends color to the supposition of 

 their having been able to make canoes and catamarans. If 

 the laterite mud-banks be regarded as having been inter- 

 tidal, the hypothesis of the boats is in no way invalidated, 

 for without them the people could not have ventured to 

 wander so far away from terra firma, as we find perfectly 

 preserved and unrolled Implements, e. g., the laterite plateau 

 on the right bank of the Corteliar immediately west of the 

 present Madras, Nellore high-road, and the laterite gravel 

 and conglomerate at Palaveram. 



It might be objected to this that these eastern spreads of 

 laterite were of much younger date than those around and 

 near the base of the Alicoor and Sattavedu hills, (the 

 principal islands in this portion of the laterite sea) and that 

 the former were deposited only after the elevation above sea- 

 level of the latter more westerly parts of the formation, 

 around which they formed as it were merely an intertidal 

 fringe of shoals during part of the period of elevatory move- 

 ment : hence these extreme easterly beds might have been 

 visited during ebb-tide from the higher lying and perma- 

 nently uncovered mud-flats without the use of boats. 



But there is no evidence to prove such a great difference 

 of age and the mineral and strati-graphical characters tend 

 to prove that the eastern parts of the lateritic formations 

 were deposited at a considerable distance from land, and that 

 if they were not absolutely synchronous with, they were of 

 but slightly less antiquity than the more elevated western 

 portions of the formation. 



That the ancient men should have wandered over th© 

 mud-fiats left dry by the ebb-tides in search of food, &c, is 



