PART 1.] 
A n n na l Report for 1876 . 
3 
species to suit a fancied age, are the offspring of these false assumptions. Such a practice 
must utterly confound the attempt to work-out the natural history of organic evolution. 
The facts of our Gondwana rocks are certainly puzzling to systematists: on the west, 
in Kach (Cutch) we have the flora of the top Gondwana group, which has a Bathonian 
facies, associated with marine fossils of Titkonian affinities; while on the south-east, in 
Trichinopoli, beds with a flora (so far as known) like that of the Rajmahal group, which 
is taken to he liassic, have been described by Mr. H. F. Blanford* as overlaid, in very 
close relation, by the Ootatoor group, the fauna of which has been declared, upon very 
full evidence, to have a Cenomanien facies. 
These questions of homotaxis concern the whole body of naturalists as much as they 
do ns; and I hope some guiding spirits amongst them will keep a watch on our proceedings. 
Happily these foreign relations do not interfere with the local regulation of our rock-systems. 
The terrestrial fauna and flora of the Gondwanas is developing into a compact unity of 
its own, and its relations to contiguous marine fossil faunas is normal, so far as this word 
can be legitimately used. 
Omitting the original account of the Narbada or Satpura field, in which the succession 
of the rocks was altogether misunderstood, the Survey has hitherto been engaged almost 
entirely upon outliers of the Gondwana system, where the series is more or less broken. 
This order has been imposed upon us by geographical and economical conditions. The 
great central areas of South Riwah and the Satpuras have still to be worked in detail. 
The latter seems to present a very full series in unbroken succession. It is here that we 
may expect ultimately to establish a better knowledge of this important formation. 
The work of Messrs. King and Hughes on these rocks has been noticed above. 
Mr. Foote was also engaged on the same formations, in examining the chain of outliers 
of upper Gondwana deposits along the coast of the Carnatic. He sent in a fine series of 
fossils from these beds at Vamavaram. 
It had been arranged that Mr, Ball should make an exploration of the large area of 
unknown country between the Makanadi and the Godavari; but he was detained to 
investigate the re-discovery of the Talchir coal-field by the Civil Officers of Orissa. In 
connection with this duty, he was able tt> complete the mapping of the Raigarh and Hingir 
coal-basin, which is on the south-east extension of the great Gondwana area of South 
Riwah and Sirguja. A narrow strip of Talchir beds stretches from that basin to within 
two miles of the Talchir field. He also examined the sedimentary basin west of Cuttack, 
on the margin of the Mahanadi delta, and procured some plant-fossils from the Atgarh 
sandstone, which Dr. Feistmantel recognises as of the Rajmahal flora. 
Tertiary formations .—An important gap in our knowledge of the Sub-Himalayaii ter- 
tiaries has been filled up by the past season’s field-work. MM. Medlioott, Theobald and 
Lydekker made an outline-survey of the broad baud of tertiary deposits flanking the Pir 
Panjal, in the Jamu territory, thus connecting previous work in the Cis-Ravi and 
Trans-Jhelam regions. The discrepancy that existed in the sections of these two regions 
has been, in a manner, interpreted—by the greater, and thereby earlier, elevation in 
the direction of the Central Himalaya, whereby the apparently unbroken succession of 
deposits, from the nummulitic to the upper Siwaliks, as exhibited on the Jhelam, becomes 
gradually separated into bands that are at least locally unconformable. The extreme effect 
of this is exhibited in the oldest beds: the inner belt of nummulitic and associated deposits 
Memoirs, Geological Survey, Vol. IV, page 47. 
