288 



GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 



book on " Island Life " that the basins of the great oceans 

 have ever continued much the same as they are now. 



The vast collection of fossils made by Mr. H. F. Blan- 

 ford, with the assistance of the colleagues before named, 

 was examined and described mainly by Dr. Stoliczka, who 

 dealt with all excepting the genera Belemnites and Nautilus. 

 These two genera were treated of by Mr. H. F. Blanford 

 himself and figured in the Palceontologia Indica. Dr. 

 Stoliczka's detailed results were also given in four volumes 

 of the Palceontologia Indica* in which will be found full 

 descriptions and figures of the very numerous species (nearly 

 800) of animals obtained during he survey of the Trichinopoly, 

 Vriddhachalam, and Pondicherry areas. 



The type collection, which is now in the Indian Museum 

 in Calcutta, was shown at Vienna during the great exhibition 

 and called forth great admiration, while the publication of 

 Dr. Stoliczka's investigations raised him to a very high place 

 in scientific public opinion. 



The most striking feature in the South Indian cretaceous 

 fauna, and especially of the Utatur group, is the great number 

 of cephalopoda, of which no less than 146 species were met 

 with, most of them being species till then unknown to 

 science. Of these 146 species of cephalopoda no fewer than 

 1 09 belong to the Utatur group and 95 are peculiar to it (in 

 India). The Utatur group is also very rich in corals owing 

 to the number of coral reefs occurring at the base of the 

 group. The Trichinoploy group is poor in cephalopoda but 

 rich in gasteropoda, and among them are various forms of the 

 syphonostomata, the pioneers as it were of the great mollus- 

 can family, which in tertiary and recent times have assumed 

 the role played by the carnivorous cephalopoda in earlier 

 geological times. In the Arialur fauna, the richest of the 

 three, the striking feature is the great development of the 



% Palceontologia Indica, vols, i — iv. The Cretaceous Fauna, including 

 series i, iii, v, vi and viii. 



