28 Records of the Geological Survey of India. [vol. ix. 
Notes on the age of some fossil floras of India, by Ottokar Feistmantel, m.d., 
Geological Survey of India. 
I AND II. 
While preparing detailed descriptions and investigations of tire several fossil floras 
of India, with drawings of all the most important specimens for the Palreontologia Indica, 
I think it best to give brief outlines in this place of the results I have obtained from the 
study. Though persuaded of their interest, both general and special, I must not presume 
that every naturalist can and will take the time and trouble to study those detailed investi¬ 
gations. All may, however, easily master the results if offered to them in this short form. 
It is necessary to preface these papers with a notice of the formations to which they 
refer. The best known, because almost the only fossiliferous, rock-series in the peninsular 
area of India, is that usually spoken of collectively as the plant-bearing series. This is an 
awkward designation ; and I will at once adopt instead the name Gondwana series or 
system, to be understood in the same wide sense as when we speak of the Jurassic or 
Silurian scries or system. The name was proposed some years ago by Mr. Medlicott, and 
has since been more or less current on the survey; it has been once used in print by 
Mr. H. F. Blanford in his little work on the Physical Geology of India. We have in India 
important coal-bearing strata of cretaceous and nummulitie age, quite distinct from the 
Gondwana series, to the flora of which we will first call attention in those papers as of more 
pressing interest. 
From Raniganj, on the western edge of the Delta of the Ganges, these formations 
stretch in detached basins up the valley of the Damuda, between the crystalline masses 
of Chutia Nagpur and Hazaribagh. Smaller patches also occur on the northern portion 
of the latter area, in some of the valleys, and along the border of the gneiss towards the 
plains of the Ganges. The Raj m ah a l area belongs to this position. From the head of the 
Damuda they stretch into the valley of the Sone, spreading out there into the wide basin of 
South Rcwnh. A narrow band of the topmost group, passing by Jabalpur, connects this area, 
across the gneissic mass forming the watershed of the peninsula, with the large basin in the 
Satpura range, on the west side of which, along the Moran river, the stratified series passes 
in force beneath the trap rocks of the Deccan. Some few inliers have been detected beneath 
the trap further to the west in the Narbada valley, as about Barwai. Throughout the entire 
course along the Sone and Narbada valleys, the boundary of the Gondwana series runs close 
to the great Vindhyan plateau, from the scarp of which it is everywhere separated by a 
varying belt of gneissic or schistose rocks. 
Far removed to the west, but still within the rock-area of the Indian peninsula, plant¬ 
bearing beds of the Gondwana age have long been known to occur in Ivach. 
This northern region of the Gondwana deposits, stretching obliquely across India 
from cast-north-cast to west-south-west, has two extensions to the south. The South Rewah 
basin is continuous across the watershed of the Sone and Mahanadi rivers, through Sirgujah 
into Raigarh and Hingir, towards the Talchir coal-field and the Atgarh area below Katak. 
On the west, in the Satpuras, the Gondwana rocks occupy the watershed between the Nar¬ 
bada and the basin of tbe Godavari. It is doubtful whether they were ever continuous in 
this direction, but they here at least come into proximity to the deposits of the same age 
at Nagpur, and extending from here down the valleys of the Wardah and Godavari to 
Rajamandri. From the Delta of the Godavari there occur detached patches of these rocks 
along the coast of the Karnatik to Trichinopoli, fringing the great expanse of gneissic rocks 
forming the high land of the interior. 
There is only one extra-peninsular region in India where rocks of this age have been 
identified—along the base of the Eastern Himalaya, in Sikhirn and Upper Assam. 
