290 



GEOLOGICAL STJltVEY 



It would be out of place here to give long lists of the 

 fossils or to enter even briefly into the many very interesting 

 biological facts elicited by the exhaustive examination of the 

 cretaceous fauna which will be found in Dr. Stoliczka's 

 admirable volumes to which the would-be student is referred, 

 A very complete and appreciative analysis of Stoliczka's 

 work written by Mr. W. T. Blanford, f.r.s., will be found 

 in Chapter XII of the Manual of the Gteology of India (vol. i., 

 p. 266). 



These South Indian cretaceous rocks are certainly by far the 

 most interesting groups in the country, and with their great 

 wealth of organic remains ought certainly to attract the 

 attention of amateur geologists, a class which unfortunately 

 is almost without representatives in India. Closely as the 

 Trichinopoly area was examined by Mr. H. F. Blanford 

 and his colleagues many new species (as yet undescribed with 

 one exception) were obtained by the present writer in a short 

 trip in 1877-78, the most interesting among them being 

 an Ichthyosaurus 9 and representatives of the important 

 and typically cretaceous family of sponges known as Ventri- 

 culites. Both these forms were discovered in the lower beds 

 of the Utatur group, the former to the north-east of Utatur, the 

 latter to the south-west of Maravattur. 



The general survey of the country included within the 

 limits of sheet 79 excluding the cretaceous areas and some 

 small tracts of the adjoining rocks was commenced early in 

 1859 and fell almost entirely to the share of Messrs. King 

 and Foote, by whom it was described in a memoir published 

 in 1863. 10 



9 See rough notes on the cretaceous fossils from Trichinopoly District, 

 collected in 1877-78, by R. Bruce Foote, p.g.s., Geological Survey of India, 

 Records. Geological Survey of India, vol. xii, 1879. 



This Ichthyosaurus had since been determined and described by Mr. 

 R. Lydekker, Geological Survey of India, in the Paleontologia Indian, Series 

 iv, vol. i, Reptilia and Batrachia. 



10 Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India, vol. iv, part 2. 



