RECORDS 
OF THE 
GEOLOGICAL SUEYEY OF INDIA. 
Parti.] 1877. [February. 
Annual Repoet of the Geological Sueyey of India and of the Geological 
Museum, Calcutta, foe the yeae 1876. 
Gondwana formation.—The past year has certainly been one of special advance in 
our knowledge of Indian formations; we have at last successfully grappled with our 
great plant-bearing series of rocks, now known as the Gondwana system—the only extensive 
fossiliferous formation of peninsular India. This advance is, of course, duo to palaeontological 
aid. The splendid work on the cretaceous fauna of Southern India, produced by Dr. Stoliezka 
in the Palseontologia Indiea, after several years’ labour, will no doubt, for a long time to 
come, be a standard of reference in the examination of rocks of that age, besides its in¬ 
dependent merits as a study of a great branch of natural history. The same may be 
said of the work on the Jurassic Cephalopoda of Each by Dr. Waagen, noticed in the last 
annual report. Yet it is not too much to say that the results of a few months’ study 
by Dr. Feistmantel have been of more immediate service to the Survey. 
The explanation of this is simple. Both the treatises referred to deal with rocks that 
only occur in patches on the outskirts of the peninsula, whereas the Gondwana deposits 
occupy large areas ; and, on account of their economic importance, they have been from 
the beginning the chief object of our investigations. It would seem as if there were here 
a case of misdirected labour ; hut it must be recollected that, on the whole, marine creatures 
form an immense proportion of fossil remains; and, as a consequence, comparatively 
few palaeontologists are capable of dealing with a fossil flora. I am happy to say we are 
now well provided in this way. 
As an illustration of these results, I may mention the case of a large spread of rocks 
marked down by Mr. Hughes in the Pranhita valley. Two localities of this area have 
for many years been famous as having yielded remarkable vertebrate fossils, from which, 
and from the general aspect of the deposits, it had been considered that these beds were 
on the horizon of the Panchets, in the lower Gondwana series of Bengal. This year a few 
poor plant-fossils were found with the hone beds of Kota and Maleri. From these, and 
in their order of superposition, Dr. Feistmantel at oucc detected representatives of two 
groups of upper Gondwana deposits, the Jabalpur and Rajmahal, established by him from the 
study of the floras of the typical areas. 
This case affords also an example of independant verification, which is always such a 
welcome encouragement, as a confirmation of the soundness of our methods. Where the 
Gondwana rocks tail down towards the sea, on the border of the Godavari delta, they 
