PAItT 1.] 
Wynne: Poorna River. 
3 
A deposit of varying thickness (within three feet) and but small lateral extent, consist¬ 
ing of fine dazzlingly white sand finely laminated occurs in the alluvial bank of the Poorna 
at Paruth. It appears to be composed of comminuted or disintegrated crystals of felspars 
with a small admixture of clay. It did not appear to be formed of or to contain minute 
organisms, such as foraminifera, and was not elsewhere observed. 
Much of this Poorna alluvium produces efflorescences of salts, of soda chiefly, and in 
many places the wells sunk in it are brackish or salt. Over a wide tract on each side of the 
Poorna river, north of Akola and thence eastward towards Oomrawuttee, wells are 
specially sunk for obtaining common salt from highly saturated brine. 
Some of these salt wells near Dyhunda in the lands of Gunoree are from 120 to 130 
feet in depth or probably more. They are sunk through yellow clay, then redder clay, and 
below this a coarse sand or flue gravel from which the water issues with great force. They 
are lined with wicker work in order to preserve the pottery vessels, in which the water is 
raised by hand, from hi’eakage. The crystals of the salt are small and it is rather dirty, but 
during the “dhup kala” or hot season, it can be obtained whiter. The wells are numerous 
over the tract north of the river and some also occur to the south. 
That the alluvium of the valley is of considerable depth may be perhaps inferred from 
the absence of numerous exposures of rock, as well as from the depth of nullahs and height 
of the river cliffs. The conglomerate, as usual, occurs in its lower portions, but was observed 
in some places west of Patulla at different heights ill the sections exposed. Its constant or 
frequent occurrence beneath, the rest of the alluvium would not prove its being contem¬ 
poraneous in all places, as the trap rocks, upon which these deposits lie, cannot he presumed 
to have had a surface sufficiently even to have permitted this. 
Whether the whole of this alluvium was deposited in a lake, or by the river travelling 
from side to side of the valley under other conditions than at present obtain, does not appear. A 
former estuarine state of things may bo indicated by the salt-hearing gravels, or a large 
salt lake, but the even though interrupted surface of the alluvium is against the probability of 
its having been deposited by the Poorna under present conditions; while want of informa¬ 
tion as to the relative levels, obscures the possibility of determining whether tho rocky 
country about Edulabad may not have formed a natural bund flooding the country occupied 
by the alluvium; certainly the stream through most of this is sluggish, but it seems to he 
a rather strong assumption, that no greater fall than the height of the river banks where 
it enters this rocky tract—perhaps on an average not more than 30 feet—takes place within 
so great a distance as extends between this and the upper end of the alluvium, about or 
S. W. of Oomrawuttee. 
Good water is scarco in this district, in some places shallow ‘jhieries’* alone can be 
depended upon for a supply, the wells being brackish and even the river gravels furnishing 
brackish water if pierced to any considerable depth. A succession of dry years seems to 
have greatly reduced the usual supplies of water, and very many of the villages among tho 
hills to the north are deserted, it is Said, because the streams which supplied them formerly 
do not now furnish sufficient water. Not improbably the diminution in the supply has been 
caused by the wholesale cutting down of the jungles which covered the country before the 
period of the English Raj.f 
The hills and portion of the valley south of the Poorna river have been stated to consist 
of trap similar to that of tho Deccan; all the usual varieties of amygdaloid, zeolitic, 
columnar, hard, gray, and softer, ashy-looking traps occur, their stratification being very 
perceptible, and always nearly horizontal. 
* This name is applied to smalt excavations in the sandy bed of a river reaching the water which trickles 
beneath the surface and thus becomes naturally filtered. 
t Want of water is much eomxilained of at Chikulda. There seems to he no reason why the plateau to the 
■east of the bungalows should not allbrd a sufficient catchment basin for the station. As the trappean strata of the 
hill clip N. by W. at 5 a , if wells were sunk, the north side of the plateau would he the position to choose with most 
probability of success. Near the bungalows however the plateau, if such it can be called, is very narrow, and affords 
a much smaller catchment area, yet even here the hill must contain strata which retain water as it issues from the 
rocky beds of nullahs, and one well immediately beneath the northern edge of the plateau, and at a considerable 
height upon the mountain side, is stated never to go dry. 
