298 Records of the Geological Surrey of India. [voL. XI. 
were also found in the Beaufort beds, which plants agree very closely with the 
Indian species of the Damuda series. 
Through this great relationship of the plant-remains in the rocks of Africa, 
India and Atistralia, H. Bhinford was led to suppose the existence of a great 
continent, which occupied the greatest part of the Indian Ocean, and United 
Australia, India and Africa, and whose northern coast wo have just been trying 
to trace in the Himalaya A union of this continent even with China would 
appear to have existed through Sikkim. To the south, Madagascar and the 
Mascarene islands were also very probably included in this continent. It is 
exti’emely probable that towards the close of the palaeozoic epoch the greater 
part of this continent rose above the sea, and the migration of the flora seems to 
have proceeded from Australia, as the appearance of Olossopteris successively in 
higher beds as one travels westward also appears to indicate. The glacial periods 
indicated by the Talchir boulder-bed and the Bcca conglomerate may have 
offered a barrier to the rapid advance of the flora. 
In the Jurassic period we meet with totally different circumstances. The 
coast line of this period is also entirely wanting in the Himalaya, and we can 
only conjecture from the absence of marine Jurassic formations, south of the 
first crystalline zone, that the former distribution of land and water held good 
eastward of the Jhilum as well as in the neighbourhood of Katmandu, in Nepal, 
and in Sikkim. In the Salt Range again the coast line is all the more distinct. 
The upper beds of the trias and the lower beds of the jura are here developed 
as such absolutely littoral formations (sandstones with obscure plant-remains and 
a few littoral gasteropods and bivalves) that it is extremely difficult to determine 
their age according to the fossils. Only the higher divisions of the jura show 
really marine formations, but they are still always of littoral type. To the 
southward of the Salt Range Jurassic beds rise up above the desert sand at 
Jessulmeer. They are sandstones containing Cephalopoda and fragments of 
fossil wood, and show themselves thus to be littoral formations. The jurassics 
of Kachh are also littoral throughout, for numerous pieces of petrified wood and 
other obscure plant-remains are distributed through nearly the whole series of 
beds, which consists almost entirely of sandstones and shales, and is succeeded 
above by genuine plant-beds without marine fossils. 
The Jurassic formations on the lower Godavari, where distinct plant-remains 
appear mixed with a few marine fossils, were probably deposited at the mouths of 
rivers. The identity existing between groat part of the Godavari species and 
the Kachh species appears to point to a geographical connection between the two 
regions. All the other Jurassic deposits of the Indian peninsula are fresh-water 
deposits without marine fossils. 
I have drawn the coast lino in the little map as based on the facts. Accord¬ 
ing to this, the connection with South Africa which I advocate for the triassic 
period has completely disappeared in the Jurassic period. The Indian continent 
terminated southward with Ceylon, but in the east it was probably connected 
with a still larger continent. 
