PART 2,] 
Grieshach : Geological Notes, 
87 
from the south,—the general strike being about east to west or nearly so. 
Devonian beds with almost the same fossil contents are found in the Falkland 
Islands, South America. 
Quite unconformable on it lie the so-called Table-mountain sandstones. I 
need scarcely say that, as the name implies, the stratification is almost horizontal, 
sometimes quite so, thus forming a marked physical feature in the landscape. 
They are made up of red and brown gritty sandstones, of hard quartzites and 
partings of silicious shales. 
When I crossed the Vindhians last year, I was at once, and forcibly, reminded 
of the South African tablelands, not only by the similar scarpied outlines, but 
also by the similarity of lithological character. 
A few thin seams of coal have been found in the Table-mountain sandstone, 
and a few badlj^ preserved traces of fossil plants, probably of Lepidodendron, 
pointing to a Carboniferous age and to fresh-water conditions. As Hochstetter 
has already jjointed out long ago, the Table-mountain sandstone is enclosed 
between the Devonian formation on one side and the loAver Karoo beds on the 
other; the latter are most likely of Tidassic or Permian age, so therefore the age 
of the Table-mountain sandstone becomes, as a matter of course, Carboniferous. 
The close of the Carboniferous epoch marks a great change of condition.s 
here. A steady pressure from the south, which before had ali-eady lifted the 
Devonian deposits above the level of the sea before the deposition of the sand¬ 
stones, resulted in crushing and faulting of parts of the horizontal beds of the 
Carboniferous, and a further rise of a fringing southern belt of the Table-mountain 
sandstone, with a corresponding depression northwards, in which the first 
deposits of the Karoo series could be laid. 
We see therefore that it is with the dose of the Carhoniferous that changes of 
conditions begin, m>d an entirely neto series of forms ojjpear of a decidedly mesozoic 
type. There is a break, into which nothing will fit, but perhaps a widely extended 
boulder bed at the base of the succeeding Karoo beds, and as yet found devoid 
of organic remains. 
7. The Indian Peninsula during the palmozoio epoch ,—As noticed above, a 
series of rocks of a semi-metamorphic character occu23ies in some parts of Central 
and Southern India the position between the metamorphics on one side and the 
Vindhian sandstone on the other. These rocks have received many names and are 
described at length in our Memoirs. Since all are older than the Vindhians, 
and in some respects analogous with the marine Cambrian deposits of the 
Himalayas, I may class them together as representing the Cambrian series. 
With the Cambrians of the Central Himalayas they have this structural character 
in common, that they share with the underlying metamorphics in all disturbances 
which have affected the latter both in the hills and in the Peninsula, and that 
the succeeding formation shows, in places at least, an unconformity. A s I have 
shown above, there is an uninterrupted series of marine palseozoic rocks to be found 
on the north slope of our Himalayas; not a single member of the marine series is 
met with south of the central range, and it is fair to assume that the present 
central range marked the palseozoic boundary between land and ocean, or very 
nearly so. If my assumption is correct that the pre-Vindhian rocks are identical 
