OCT. — DEC. 1856.] 



of the Southern Division. 



91 



The face of the country is that of a level, and in some places an 

 undulating plain : lower in most cases at the foot of the mountains 

 and vast rocks, which rise abruptly from the surface, than in other 

 places. As most of the vallies are occupied with tanks and ponds 

 for irrigating the country, ravines and deep water-courses are very 

 few. 



The soils are the regur, or black cotton in the north, west and 

 south, and in small patches in some other places; the red s = ndy 

 and red irony in parts of the Talooks of Sevagunga. Malocr, Ram- 

 gherry and Tadicomboo, and the light sandy and gravelly "on the 

 sea-shore and in vicinity of the rivers, and a few other places ; and 

 the dark-brown vegetable soil confined mostly to the hills and val- 

 lies of the mountains. These various soils, with the exception of 

 the last mentioned, contain a portion of clay, but this is so free 

 from it that water penetrates through it nearly as freely as through 

 sand, or ashes, and when burned it falls to pieces like so much 

 earth. 



The alluvium beneath the soil partakes much of the nature of 

 the underlaying rock except in the vicinity of the sea and the ri- 

 vers. There it is either the fine-washed send mingled with land, 

 fresh water, or marine shells, or the fluviatile and lacustrine depo- 

 sits. A deposit resembling the loess of the Rhone, and the silt and 

 crag of some pools of England are met with in various places. 



In noticing more particularly the features of this region we rind, 

 that in the northern part of the Trichinopoly District, in the black 

 soil through which that remarkable bed of fossil shells and Crusta- 

 cea passes, and in the vicinity of the Vellar are beds of a pure ba- 

 salt, both in nodular masses and in large blocks, and as it breaks 

 with a smooth and even fracture, it is used, to a considerable ex- 

 tent, for building purposes. Adjoining this in the north-east are 

 beds of laterite resting upon syenitic granite. And in the north- 

 west the plains are much variegated by the out-croppings of this 

 underlying granite, which in some places passes into syenite and 

 greenstone, and rises in other places into hills and mountains that 

 extend westward beyond the boundary of the District, and south- 

 ward to within a few miles of the Cauvery. Among these hills is 



