28 
[VOL X. 
Records of the Geological Survey of India. 
Amongst the other fossils two ferns especially prevail, i. e., Pecopteris concinna, Presl. 
and Cyclopt. pachyrrhachis, Gopp., which are Rhsetic forms ; so that one might take the 
Panchet group of this age—only the occurrence of the Schizoneura Gondwanensis , Feistm. 
identical with the same in the Raniganj (Kamthi) group of the Damuda series, induced me 
to consider the Panchet group a little older, as representative of the upper Triassic (Keuper) 
strata in Europe. 
The reptilian remains in this group, besides the plant-remains, are also pretty frequent; 
and are not at all opposed to the evidence from the plant-remains; they belong mostly 
to the Dicynodont reptiles, which first were known from South Africa, where, however, 
their age up to the present day remains undecided. 
Here, in India, however, where we know that the Panchet group overlies immediately 
the Raniganj group, which itself is lower Triassic, and underlies the Rajmehal group, 
which is, to say the least, Liassic, and where, besides the reptiles, a flora occurs, which agrees 
with a flora from defined strata, there can, I think, be little doubt about the homotaxical 
position. 
In the Panchet group, therefore, the flora is additional evidence as to the age of this 
group, and the Panchet Estheria is identical with the small form in the Mangli beds. 
It was therefore more natural when Mr. Blanford* first took the Mangli beds as be¬ 
longing to the Panchet group. I must, however, state again that no other fossil of this 
group, except the small form of Estheria, is found in the Mangli beds; and judging from 
the absence of Schizoneura, which only induced me to class the Panchets as Keuper, my 
conjecture, that the Mangli beds are the top of the Panchet group, is perhaps not unnatural. 
There are, at least as far as I know the relations, no contradictory indications. 
3.— Estheria from Kawarsa. 
The Kawarsa beds also are in the Wardha basin, and have been mapped, like the 
Mangli beds, with the Kamthi group. The Mangli beds occur at the top of the section, at 
the northern edge of the area, immediately under the Deccan trap. Mr. Hughes estimates 
the whole thickness to the base of the Kamthis as 700 feet. This is an extraordinarily 
small thickness for the period this series is supposed to represent, and considering that 
in a neighbouring region, below the Kota-Maleri beds, on the Godavari, there is an apparent 
accumulated thickness of 17,000 feet of these ‘ Kamthi’ strata, it is certainly not too 
soon to endeavour to indicate horizons in such a mass of deposits. The Kawarsa beds 
occur near the southern margin of the basin, and Mr. Hughes speaks of them as several 
hundred feet from the the base of the series. They have yielded some broken plant-remains 
and Estheria. 
a. —An Equisetaceous stalk, pretty distinct; it belongs to that group of forms which 
generally are termed Phyllotheca, which, however, as I have already mentioned, belong to a 
great extent also to Schizoneura, Schimp., and the more so, as Phyllotheca in the real sense 
is not so frequent as Schizoneura, Sehimp. 
b. —A fragment of an oblongly lanceolate leaflet with marked ribs, which might belong 
to Schizoneura, Schimp. 
c. —Some broken specimens of Glossopteris occur very rarely in comparison with these 
so richly represented leaves at Nagpur and elsewhere in the Damudas; and I have no doubt 
that these beds, near Kawarsa, are younger than all the real Damudas, including the Kamthi- 
Raniganj group. 
* Mem., Geol. Sur„ III, p. 134. 
