58 
Records of the Geological Surrey of Lidia. 
[vol. VIII. 
and preservation of organic forms, the Vindhyan strata have as yet yielded no fossils. 
Fine building material is procurable from all the sandstones of this formation. Its most 
famous product is the diamond, the occurrence of which seems to be limited to the shales 
near Panna. 
The Gwalior Series. 
8. The most varied and instructive geological sections in all Scindia’s territories are 
in the immediate neighbourhood of Gwalior itself, where the Vin- 
dhyans are in contact with the rocks next to them in age occur¬ 
ring within our area. It would be impossible to find a better example of unconformity of 
strata. The lower rocks have not undergone any great disturbance, little more than the 
Vindkyans themselves, being still in approximate horizontality; but scarped valleys of erosion 
are found in them filled with thick masses of (Kymore) Kaimur conglomerate and sandstone, 
the former being principally made up of angular debris of the subjacent strata. These 
rocks have been called the Gwalior series. The boundary of the Vindhyans passes close to 
the west of Gwalior, with a general north-easterly direction; and the Gwalior series occupies 
a comparatively small area between the Vindhyan scarp and the river Sind, forming low 
east and west ranges of hills. The southern range is fifty miles long, and unbroken, being 
formed of a strong quartzite-sandstone, the bottom rock of the series, and known as the Par 
sandstone. This group has the same relation to the gneissic area of Bandelkand as have the 
Kaimur strata. Both present scarps towards the low ground of crystalline rocks, out of 
which the under-cliff is formed; the irregular surface of junction between the Par sand¬ 
stone and the gneiss slopes northwards, disappearing up the gorges at a few score yards from 
the line of the scarp, and so vanishing altogether towards the end of the range, where the 
Sind forms small cataracts over the Par sandstone at Seonrha. The same northerly slope 
prevails throughout the series, bringing in higher strata in that direction. The Par sand¬ 
stone is thus succeeded by a great thickness of very different strata, known as the Morar 
group. These have some docided characters common throughout—finely laminated shales 
and flags, often highly ferruginous and very commonly banded with layers and nodules of 
jasper and horastone. Two very marked breaks occur in the uniformity of this group, 
owing to the intercalation of great sheets of eruptive rock, apparently of contemporaneous 
origin; and this has resulted in a corresponding break in the form of the ground. The 
lower part of the Morar group is found along the north side of the main range of hills. 
In the irregular valley between this and the broken middle range, the rocks are concealed by 
alluvium; hut at the head of the valley, near the villages of Chaora and Buda, two strong 
flows of trap are finely exposed. There is just enough evidence to show that the valley is 
excavated along the outcrop of this trap, it is seen in the stream close to Barori village, and 
again at the east end two miles west of Behat, This is a very ancient valley; for in the 
middle of it, near Bastori, there stands a small plateau of Vindhyan sandstone. The plain 
of Morar, separating the middle range from the very broken chain of flat hills to the 
north extending eastward from the old Residency, is undoubtedly laid upon the denuded out¬ 
crop of the great sheet of trap exposed continuously all round the base of the fort-hill and of 
the adjoining scarp where it is overlaid by Kaimur sandstone, and which is equally well seen 
along the south face of the northern hills to be overlaid by the jaspideous shales of the 
Morar group. There are several scattered hillocks of this same trap over the plain to the 
east of Morar. Besides the trap, the Morar group contains local bauds of cherty limestone. 
One of these occurs in the hills about the old Residency; another is traceable in many points 
in the middle range of hills. A very rich earthy iron ore has been extensively extracted 
from near the base of the Morar group in the southern hills. In the Sind, at the eastern end 
of the southern range, at a mile and a half above the village of Nardha, there is a vein in 
the Par sandstone said to contain lead ore (galena). 
