Part 3.] 
Foote: Fepresentatives of the Upper Gondioana Series, ^'•c. 
2i7 
Notes ON the Representatives of the Upper Gondwana Series in Trichinopoly 
AND Nelloeb-Kistna DISTRICTS, BY R. Bkuce Poote, F.G.S., Qeologioal Sur- 
veij 0 ^ India. 
The following notes on the most southerly group as yet known of “plant beds” 
belonging to the upper division of the great Gondwana series, will be found to 
su23plemont very considerably the information given by Mr. H. P. Blanford about 
the “Ootatoor plant beds” in his very interesting Memoir “On the Cretaceous 
and other Rocks of the South Arcot and Trichinopoly Districts.”* 
These beds, wliich crop out from below the western boundary of the main 
area of the cretaceous rocks, were worked out by Mr. H. P. Blanford when in 
charge of the Madras Party of the Geological Survey of India in the year 1858, 
1859 and 1860. They were re-examined by me in the autumn of last year (1877), 
with the object of comjiaring them more closely with the various other groups of 
rocks of similar age which had since then been mapped during the jirogress of the 
Survey work northward, along the coast, into the Godavari valley. 
The j)lant remains which characterise these beds, and the discovery of which 
first led to the separation of the “jilantbeds” from the overlying lithologically 
similar cretaceous series, were discovered by the late Mr. Charles jSH. Oldham, to 
the east of Ootatoor vUlage, and were shortly afterwards recognised by Dr. 
Oldham, then Superintendent of the Geological Survey of India, as identical 
(in part) with the species occurring so numerously in the Rajmahal beds of 
Bengal, and with some of the fossil plants discovered in the oolitic beds of Cutch. 
The Ootatoor plants were mostly referred to the genus Palaiommia, one of the 
Cycadeous family; and this is the only name mentioned by Mr. Blanford, jircsum- 
ably because none of the others had then been determined. The plants, though 
often so favourably fossilised that very delicate markings are perfectly preserved, 
are almost always very fragmentary in character—often mere shreds of the original 
plants. 
The beds occm* in six small detached patches, which all rest directly on the 
very uneven surface of the gneiss, and form a line running north-oast-by-north to 
south-west-by-south, the extreme ends of which are fifteen miles ajiart. 
As Mr. Blanford has given but Httlo detailed information as to the variety of 
beds, the following sections will bo found useful for comparison with other 
sections elsewhere. Lists of the fossils obtained by me will also be given further 
on. 
I.— Sections op the Naicoedm Patch. 
Section No. 1 (in descending order). 
15. Brown and purple sandstone.? with obscure plant remains. 
14. Clays and shales, buff, light-brown 
13. Ditto ditto, drab, white and buff _ 
12. Sandy shale, hard, puiple and brown. 
11. Shales and clays, buff and whitish, with kunkur. 
10. Shales, gritty, ferruginous. 
[■beds, rolling. 
’Memoirs of tlie Geological Survey of India, Vol. IV, I’t. 1, 1. 
