PART 1.] 
King : Knddapah and Kurnool formations. 
7 
These four groups are quite distinct, though conformable ; they generally overlap each 
other in some part of the field, and they lie, for the most part, very much as they were 
originally deposited, viz., in great flat basins with edges slightly turned up,* or in very flat 
undulations, from which, however, the upper limestones are always denuded, leaving the 
quartzites exposed. 
1st Gboup, Kiiooxdatb Limestones. 
The uppermost group lies nearly all over the wide Khoond-air (river) valley which 
stretches northwards from Kuddapah town, and over most of the Kuddapnh basin or southern 
extremity of this valley. There is a small outlier under the fort of Kurnool; while more 
of the same, rocks cover the eastern extremity of the Raicboor Donb. Again, a considerable 
detached area of these beds, with the other groups, occurs in the Palnad, or western taluqs 
of the Kistnah district. 
The rock coming to the surface,t especially in the Khoond-air valley, is not, however, 
always limestones; more generally, there are reddish-purple calcareous shales (occasionally 
cleaved), and these constitute the upper member of the group. For instance, the shales occur 
all up the middle, and very strongly at either end, of this great valley. They gradually shade 
down into the typical limestones of the group, which are dark-gray, more or less earthy, 
sub-crystalline beds; sometimes very massive and thick, oftener flaggy or easily split up 
into flags of 1—3 inches in thickness. The limestones are also occasionally more crystalline 
and compact, and cleaved to a certain estent, where folding or crushing of the beds has 
taken place, as along the eastern side of the Khoond valley. They of course show most 
along the skirts of the valley, as near Kuddapali, Podatoor, Dhoor, Cbagalmurry, 
Sirwel, and so on up to the banks of the Kistnah . 
2nd Gboup, Paneum Quartzites. 
Along the western side of the Khoond valley, the country rises very gently in a series 
of low long-sloping hills, with a few plateaus and undulations, which finally present an 
irregular scarp towards the Bellary district. These are the Gundicottah, Ramwarum 
and Paneum hills, whose surfaces, with the exception of the Gundicottah range, are made 
up of quartzites of the second group, which thus rises up from under the limestones of the 
Khoond valley. 
This is the only side of this part of the country over which these quartzites occur; 
they do not appear on the western side of the valley, for the group thinned out altogether 
in that direction, as well as to the north and south ; the sections among the turned up strata 
on this side showing the upper limestone group lying on the lower one without any inter¬ 
vening quartzites, as is the ease in the sections on the western side. 
Altered sandstones of the same group show rather strongly in the Kistnah district; 
where they are again, through the denudation of the tipper limestones, the superficial beds 
of the low hills in the south-west corner of the Palnad. 
The quartzites are of two kinds, quite distinct enough as features in the landscape, hut 
hardly sufficiently so to he referred to as separate members of a group. The upper variety 
is a thick-bedded, massive, compact, white sandstone, much vitrified, hut granular, and 
showing a very peculiar style of weathering into massive buttresses and pinnacles. The 
strata are generally horizontal, or at a very low angle, arid the steep-sided ravines and scarps 
denuded in these are often fringed with strangely picturesque masses of rock, or the slopes 
below the scarps are strewn with great fallen masses of the same beds. The high-road from 
Kurnool to Nundial passes over a plateau of those white quartzites, and the quaintly worn 
masses immediately remind one of some rocky coast from whence the rushing and tumbling 
waters have long since retired. 
Coarse sandstones and grits, with pebble beds, of dark colors, and in thinner strata 
are generally found subjacent to the thick, white, pinnacled quartzites, and are often alone 
without the covering of the upper beds. In such last cases, the remaining beds now form 
the summits of a number of flat-topped hills fringing the Koilkoontla and Banagan- 
pilly sides of the Khoond valley. 
* The subjacent Kudijapahs arc, on the contrary, turned up on end, convoluted, crushed, and faulted in the most 
varied way. 
t The Khoond valley is very extensively covered with cotton soil. 
