IN SOUTHERN INDIA. 



309 



interesting fossil shells of cretaceous age, including a number 

 of ammonites and belemnites, &c. Unfortunately the block 

 could not be traced to any locality where similar rock occurred 

 in situ, but it is not improbable that an outcrop of such rocks 

 might be discovered under the extensive deposit of coarse 

 gravel described by the author under the name of Conjeveram 

 gravels which occur over great part of the taluk of that 

 name. 



The Sripermatur rocks dip as already described under 

 gritty beds regarded as identical in age with the Cuddalore 

 sandstones and, in the absence of these, directly under the 

 lateritic formation. The Cuddalore beds are uninteresting 

 as they are so far utterly unfossiliferous in the Madras country. 

 The lateritic formation varies greatly in petrological charac- 

 ter from enormously coarse conglomerates with hard ferugin- 

 ous matrix to typical, vermiculated, clayey laterite, and 

 this again to slightly-compacted more or less ferruginous 

 sands. The coarse conglomeratic beds occur in the west ; the 

 two latter forms occur chiefly in the centre or near the coast. 

 The conglomeratic beds near Madras offer one very interest- 

 ing feature, which is that they contain chipped stone imple- 

 ments of human manufacture. Since the first discoveries of 

 these implements of the Abbeville type by the author and his 

 colleague, Mr. King, 22 at Palaveram and in the banks of the 

 Attrampakkam mullah, other unquestionable examples of 

 them have been found in connection with the lateritic for- 

 mations of the eastern coast from the great Udayarpalaiyam 

 laterite plateau up to the Godavari river, while other gravel 

 deposits at much higher levels and of different origin in the 

 districts of Kadapa, Karnul, Kistna, Dharwar, Kaladgi, and 



22 See the G-eologyof Madras.— Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India, 

 vol. x, part 1. See also papers by the author in the Journal of the Madras 

 Literary Society for 1866, and the Journal of the Geological Society of 

 London for 1868. 



