part 1.] Feistmantel: Estheria in the Gondwana formation. 
29 
To this indication now is to be added the occurrence of J Estheria, which is certainly iden¬ 
tical with that in the Panchet group, the state of preservation and the size and form being 
identical; and is therefore to be considered as very likely Estheria uninuta var. Erodieana 
Jon. 
From this occurrence of the Estheria , an animal fossil which is still so frequent in the 
Mangli beds and in the Panchet group, and from the scarcity of plants altogether, and from 
the state of the rock, it would, I think, follow that the locality at Kawarsa is scarcely to be 
considered as representative of any group of the real Damuda beds, the fossils of which are 
everywhere so different from those both of the Mangli and the Kawarsa beds. 
It must thus he admitted that this blending of the fossil forms indicates transition, and 
affords some support to the continuity of the stratigraphicai characters in this area, whereby 
the whole has been mapped and published as a single rock-group; an abridged representation 
of the top of the lower Gondwarra series, in which the Panchet and upper Damuda groups 
are very closely connected. 
The possible persistence of two Estheria horizons (as is known to occur in Europe) may, 
however, be worth suggesting—an upper, with two Estheria (Mangli), and a lower, with the 
Estheria minuta (Panchet and Kawarsa). 
4 .—Estheria in the Kota beds . 
From the Kota beds on the Pranhita, near Sironcha, Mr. Jones described also a species 
of Estheria as Estheria Kotaensis , Jones.* 
The Kota locality and the neighbouring one of Maleri (Maledi) have long been famous in 
Indian geology for fish and crocodilian remains. The general relations of these deposits 
have recently been approximately fixed by the Survey. I bey rest upon the Kamthi beds, 
with more or less of unconformity, at the south end ot the Wardha coal-field; extend thence 
down the valley of the Pranhita to Sironcha, on the Godavari, where they again overlie an 
immense thickness of rocks of Kamthi aspect. But for the prevalence of red and green cla^s^ 
and the frequent occurrence of a limestone, they are not themselves strikingly diffeient in 
mineral character from the Kamthi type; which again, as has been often remarked, has many 
resemblances to that of the original Panchet group of Bengal. On this account, and from 
the decidedly Keuperic affinities of the majority of the vertebrate fossils of Maleri, the beds 
here have been hitherto regarded by the Survey as probably on the Panchet horizon; the 
Kota limestone, from its fish-remains, being taken as Liassic and thus presumably younger. 
Mr. Hughes has shown that the beds of both localities are on the same horizon, and the foi- 
mation is now known as the Kota-Maleri group.f 
Amongst the numerous additions to our collections of vertebrate fossils from these 
beds, made by Messrs. King and Hughes, there were a very few plant-remains, of which 
I have determined two from Maleri as common species of the Kach-Jabalpur horizon, 
and one, from a bed underlying the Kota limestone, as a familiar species of the Rajmahal 
group. It may not be established that the circumstances of position indicate a permanent 
distinction of these two groups in this region, as I have already shown that in their 
typical areas they have some forms in common. But at all events, these plant fossils go far 
to establish the position of the Kota-Maleri beds in our Indian series, that they are not 
Panchet, but Upper Gondwana, on or above the horizon of the Rajmahal group. 
This connection of the Rajmahal group with the Kota-Maleri beds is significant, so 
far as the strongly Rhsetic affinities of the vertebrate fossils confirm my determination 
* Monograf of Esther, 1. c., p. 81, PI. II, f. 24-25. 
t See Hughes, Mem., Geol. Survey.Vol. XIII. p. 81. 
