2 
Records of the Geological Survey of India. 
[vol. x. 
become associated with marine beds. .Mr. King has been for some time working in this 
region, and has established three well-marked groups in upper Gondwana rocks,—a bottom 
one, with a well characterized Iiajmahal flora, and two upper ones, with distinctive marine 
fossils. Prom a cursory inspection of these latter specimens, Dr. Stoliczka had recognized 
the upper group as corresponding with his Omia group, at the top of the Jurassic series of 
Kach, with the flora of which group Dr. Peistinantel has identified that of the Jabalpur 
group of the Narbada and Sone regions. During the past season, Mr. King was directed 
to make a traverse up the Godavari, to bring his work into connection with Mr. Hughes’ 
ground on the Wardha and Pranhita. He has satisfactorily recognised in the Ivota-Maleri 
area representatives of his three upper Gondwana zones of the Lower Godavari. 
While thus the internal economy of the Gondwana system is being regulated in a 
most satisfactory manner, I fear that its foreign relations are being somewhat mismanaged. 
They are now quite a burning question amongst us. Paleontologists come from their 
cabinets in Europe with the fixed idea that the “ laws ” they have seen to work so neatly 
as between Bohemia and Bavaria, or from Durham to Dorsetshire, will apply equally well 
between India and Australia, or Europe; and the eager aim of their labours seems to be to 
tally off our Indian rock-groups as the representatives, or equivalents, of certaiu fossiliferous 
series of Europe or elsewhere. Prom the beginning, this palaeontological fallacy has been a 
chief obstruction to our knowledge. When first the Gondwana fossils were taken up, pure 
geology being in the ascendant, the fact that certain plant-forms of the lower Gondwana rocks 
were somehow associated with beds having a carboniferous marine fauna in Australia, was 
made the basis of a special-pleading to show that the Damudas, their flora, and their coal were 
palmozoie. The materials have now come into the hands of a pure paleontologist. He 
has shown, I believe conclusively, that the Gondwana flora is wholly mesozoic, nailing its 
several phases to certain representative zones in Europe. But it so happens that on the 
confines of India, east and west, the upper Gondwana groups are associated with beds 
having a marine fauna, according to which these said groups have already been attached 
by palmontological experts to other standard groups in Europe. It is true that the study 
of this fauna was only partial; but the experts were very accomplished in their line, and 
their judgment was quite unprejudiced. Bo that it must carry great weight. Here then, 
again, is an opening for the proerustean method of research ; and there are symptoms that it 
is to be duly applied; this time, to make the fauna conform to the flora. The expression 
paleontological contradiction,’ which has heen applied to this fact of association, exhibits 
the predicament in a very naive manner. The contradiction is certainly there, but only as a 
rebuke for those who cau look upon it in that light. No theologian could be more impious 
in reducing the mysteries of existeuce to the compass of his narrow thoughts, than are often 
scientific specialists in imposing crude conceptions upon the proceedings of nature. Yet 
these ought to know better—that truth is discovered, not invented. 
The treatment the facts of our Gondwana system have thus received in the name 
of homotaxis is quite opposed to scientific principles. It is fiction to assume that 
palmozoic and mesozoic faunas have not co-existed upon the earth. The very word homotaxis 
was introduced to meet facts of this order. Yet, when some approach to it is met with in 
the rocks, a lively dispute is set up as to which fauna is out of place! The dispute 
becomes doubly awkward when waged over a terrestrial flora versus a marine fauna. A 
compromise that the marine fauna should take precedence would be a miserable confession 
of weakness, and quite out of place in a rational investigation. It would only tend to 
crystallize that false notion of misplacement; to frustrate, in fact, that fruitful conception of 
a purely biological homotaxis which should be as a pole-star to the paleontologist. The 
vicious practices of giving different specific names to fossils for no other reason than that 
they occur on different stratigraphical horizons, even at distant localities, and of trimming 
