m SOUTHERN INDIA. 



295 



Various views were propounded as to the age of these rocks 

 and their equivalents in Central India, thus Dr. Carter, in his 

 Summary, classes them as of oolitic age, and includes them in 

 one great series with the carboniferous and other still 

 younger plant-bearing rocks, the Gondwana rocks of the 

 Geological Survey. Newbold with greater caution had, in the 

 absence of any fossils, refrained from forming any positive 

 conclusion as to their age, but inclined, as did also Dr. 

 Malcomson, to regard them as very old, secondary, or possibly 

 even, metamorphie. But he also grouped them together with 

 the overlying fossiliferous rocks and he fell into the error 

 of regarding the limestones of the diamond series as occupy- 

 ing, with few exceptions, the lowest position. None of the 

 earlier observers regarded these transition rocks otherwise than 

 as one great group. It remained for Mr. King, when survey- 

 ing the country between Karnul and Kadapa, to discover 

 and work out the important fact that two groups of rocks 

 existed there. The younger, to which he gave the name of 

 the Karnul group lying unconformably on the more or less 

 disturbed and denuded Kadapa beds, or else overlapping 

 them on to the gneiss. In many parts the unconformity, 

 though positive, is from the form of the ground often very 

 hard to make out, and to Mr. King belongs the credit due for 

 having established this important fact. The recognition of 

 the two groups was a very important advance in South Indian 

 geology.*" By far the greater part of the Kadapa and. 

 Karnul areas were worked out by Mr.- King, who drew up< 

 the long and interesting memoir/ 2 describing the large tract 

 of country they occupy from Naggeri Nose in the south to 

 Jaggiapetta in the north, and from Karnul on the west to 

 TJdayagiri in the East. The notes furnished by Mr. C. iE. 



12 "On the Kadapah and Karnul Formations in the Madras Presidency " 

 by William King, b.a., Deputy Superintendent, Geological Survey of India 

 Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India, vol. viii. 



39 



