part 1.] Fedden : On the evidences of ground-ice in tropical India. 
17 
unlike the ordinary moraine deposits of glaciers ; the boulders exhibit, most commonly, 
considerable weathering or water-wear. The boulder-bed, too, is not usually a bottom bed, 
but is generally intercalated with very regular and sharply bedded deposits. Lamination is 
moreover not unfrequently displayed in the boulder-bed itself. These features all point to the 
familiar circumstances accompanying ground-ice, where loose materials are picked np by 
the freezing of the water in rivers or on the shallow margins of water-basins, and floated 
away to be deposited elsewhere. Even so it must happen that such ice-rafts get stranded 
with more or less violence, producing striation and polishing of the imbedded boulders and 
of the rocks with which they may come in contact, as also when urged onward by the accu¬ 
mulating force of an ice-blocked river. It was therefore confidently expected that sooner or 
later evidence of this kind would be forthcoming in the Talclnr boulder-bed. 
In January 1872 I had the good fortune to find an excellent example of this missing 
link of evidence. The place was visited shortly after by Dr. Oldham, who dug out and 
removed a fine specimen of hard dense close-grained syenitic granite, of which one side is 
beautifully polished, scored and striated. This specimen is now in the Museum of the 
Geological Survey in Calcutta. Notice was given of the discovery at the time by Dr. Oldham 
in a foot note to a paper by Mr. Blanford on the Geology of Nagpur (Mem. Geol. Sur., 
India, Vol. IX, p. 321).* The section was not then very well seen. But on revisiting the 
ground during the past season, I found the rocks much better exposed. A special i-ecord of 
the case is made, as it is not unlikely that the elements may before long obliterate what they 
have now laid bare. The locality is near the little village of Irai on the right bank of the 
Pern river, not quite a mile above its confluence with the Wardha, and ten miles to west 
south-west of Chdnda. 
The surface features of the neighbourhood for a considerable distance always form an 
important consideration in the discussion of any particular case of ice-scratching; and even 
for these most ancient deposits we are not without some plausible conjectures on this point. 
Prom the very general fact of the Talchir group, and the other lower members of the series 
to which they belong, occupying low ground in the actual drainage basins, and being com¬ 
monly overlapped by the succeeding members of the series, it is apparent that the actual 
basins are in a manner the reproduction of the pre-Talchir ground-configuration. No doubt 
the ancient highlands had been greatly denuded to furnish materials for the thick deposits 
overlying the Talchirs ; and they must have suffered further reduction from the denudation 
which has for the most part removed again those overlying groups. Yet it is probable that 
the existing contours give an indication of the pre-Talchir surface. If it he so, there is 
nothing here to support the notiou of a glacier having reached the spot under notice. For 
many score miles round there is no commanding elevation of rock older than the Talchirs 
from which an ice-stream could have descended. The supposition of an expansive ice-sheet 
would be still more difficult to reconcile with the observed features. 
The general circumstances of the case under consideration thus lead us again to the 
supposition of ground-ice; and this view is remarkably strengthened by the coincidence that 
this single instance of scratched boulders is found in immediate connection with the only 
known example of a scored and polished rock-surface. The boulder-bed is here a bottom rock, 
resting upon compact Pem-limestones (Lower Vindhyan). For a length of 330 yards along 
the river’s bank this underlying rock is exposed, displaying a large surface, polished, scratched, 
and grooved after the fashion so familiar to glacialists. The surface has a slope of 12°—15° 
to the west, obliquely overcutting the strata, which have a dip of 8° to west, south-west. 
* Mr. W. Blanford also gave a brief notice of the fact, and of the general evidence for the existence of glacial 
forces at this early geological epoch in India, at the meeting of the British Association at Bradford, 1873, Sections, 
p. 76. 
