354 Records of the Geological Survey of India. [voL. xi. 
small headland some 30 feet high juts out from below the Oragidam laterite 
plateau. The beds here seen are— 
13. Laterite gravel, with quartzite pebbles. 
12. Clay, white sandy, with concretionary lateritic ironstone. 
11. Grit, friable, coarse brown, buff and whitish, with shale and sandstone partings, 
passing down into— 
10. Sandstone, brown and reddish-brown, compact, lateritic and shaley. 
9. Sandstone, buff, very fissile and shaley. 
8. Clay, sandy, white and pale buff, rather friable with plant remains. 
7. Sandstones, shaley, purple and buff with clayey partings. 
6. Shale, sandy (local). 
5. Clay, white. 
4. Sandstone, shaley, purple at top, buff below. 
3. Clay white. 
3. Sandstones, thin-bedded, buff, more gritty and purple at top. 
1. Shales, sandy, whitish, friable. 
The plant remains in No. 8 are numerous and well preserved, but very 
difficult to secure, owing to the very friable nature of the matrix. Among the 
fossils were two or three species of Ftiloidiyllum and Angiopferidhmi. 
There is nothing in the Trichinopoly plant beds that resembles the hard 
compact shale variety which occurs at several places in the Sripermatur area. 
In textui’e and lustre this shale is sometimes almost porcellanic, and when 
fossiliferous contains the best preserved remains found. A similar variety is 
common at Vernavoram in the north-eastern corner of Nellore district. Here it 
is, however, never quite so hard as the hardest foiuns seen near Sripermatur, but, 
like them, shows the fossils enclosed in a high state of preservation. 
Most of the fossils found in the Sripermatur area and at Vemavaram are 
covered by a thin film of colour, either red or purple, more rarely brown or black, 
which does not extend to the surrounding shalo or sandstone, so that the organ¬ 
ism is strikingly set off. It is very rare for the colour to extend beyond the 
limits of the organism. This colouring is much less frequent in the Trichinopoly 
specimens. The vegetable fossils from all the Upper Gondwana formations on 
the Coroma,ndel coast agree in being very fragmentary, however well preserved 
they may be in other respects. They wei'e evidently' swept out to sea in some 
condition, and speedily imbedded before decay attacked them. 
The Trichinopoly patches show many fewer argillaceous beds than do the more 
northern ones, especially those in the neighbourhood of Madras and of G untoor; 
this may be due in great measure to the different mineral character of the mass 
of the gneissic rocks which yielded the materials of which these younger rocks 
M'ere built up. Both opposite tlie Madras and Guntoor Upper Gondw'ana 
areas, coarse, highly fels23athic granitoid gneiss constitutes the main mass of the 
country over many hundred square miles, while the bulk of the gneissic rocks 
forming the Patchamallays, the high lands which yielded gi’cat pait of the 
materials of the Trichinopoly beds, arc pre-eminently silicious and ferrugi¬ 
nous. 
