9 
jReconlts of the Geological Survei/ of India. 
[voi.. :s.ui. 
In continuation west'svards of Mr. Ball's survey of the Anrunga and Hutar ■ 
Son Basin: coal-fields (IMeinoirs, XV, Pt. 1), Mr. Griesbach, during 
Mr. Grieshach: last field season, mapped and described some 900 square I 
miles of Goudwana rocks in Kamkola, between Tatapani and the Her river (his ■ 
Memoir is now at press, as Part II of \ ol. XV). This ground is the easternmost I 
prolongation of tlie gTcat central area of South R.ewah or the Son, extending 
westwards to near Katni on the Jabalpur railway, and south-eastwards into the 
Mahanadi basin, to near Sauibalpur. 
In the report for last year I gave a brief discussion, based upon Mr. Ball's 
description, of the stratigraphical features of this region as the transition ground j 
between the well-mai’ked divisions of the lower Gondwana series in the Damuda j 
valley and the conditions found in the midland areas, where the higher groups 1 
of the lower Gondwanas, as in the Kdmthi and Ilingir beds, exhibit more the 
petrological characters of the upper part of the series. It seemed as if in the 
Hutar field and locally in the Anrunga field, we already had this condition estab¬ 
lished ; and I jiointod out that W'o only awaited the discovery of lower Condwiina 
fossils in the overlying sandstone hei-e to make certain of it, and hence to draw 
some important inferences regarding the horizon of the top sandstone (“upper 
Panchet”) of the Damuda fiekls. It seems, however, that wc sliall liave to look 
farther west, within the midland area itself, for the facts of this stratigraphical 
change. Mr. Griesbach has traced a Baniganj group, w'ith good fossil characters, 
and a Panchet group loss distinctly, at and west of Tatapani; but these have been 
reclaimed chiefiy from the low-lying outcrops previously supposed to be all of the 
Barakar group,—not from the hill-forming sandstone, from which the upper 
(? Panchet) beds are not easily separable. Mr. Ball gave in his map of the 
Hutar field an indication of the possible position of an intermediate group. 
A principal object in sending Mr. Griesbach at once to a typical Gondwana 
area was, as mentioned in last annual report, that he might elucidate the supposed 
similarity between these rocks and the Karoo formation of South Africa; in¬ 
deed this object was of much weight in recommending his a])])ointment to the 
Survey. In this respect his memoir on the Ramkola coal-fields will bo found 
disappointing, the more so as it shows him to have considerable prolicionoy in the 
art of geological surveying. Mr. Griesbach has reserved his observations on this 
point for a still wider comparison in connection with his more recent work in the 
Himalayas, of which a notice will bo given in the Records for iMay. He has 
verbally stated that the Talchir boulder bed bears a very strong rcsembhuico to 
the Ecca bods of Xatal, and his descriptions exhibit more strongly than any yet 
given some of the glacial characters of the boulder bud ; but he rofiaius fioni 
any expression of opinion on this much-vc.xed question. 
It will be seen that the map of the Ramkola fields exhibits a free use of faults, 
therein resembling other maps of similar ground. The practice is quite legitimate, 
faults being a veiy common feature in such rooks ; but it is capable of abuse, and 
it has often seemed to me that this limit has been passed in our descriptions 
of these GondAvana basins. A main boundaiy is represented as a fault, without 
a word to qualify all the inferences that Avould folloiv from the simple use of 
that word. Thus, as to the throiv of this fault, that it amounts at least to the 
