5-1 
Records of t,he Geological Survey of India. 
[vol. XI. 
south-westerly dips place the lowest beds along the north side of the district, except where 
a great fault coinciding with the northern foot of the Charwar range causes them to re-appear 
in its centre. 
These lower Jurassic beds consist mainly of gray, blue, red and black shales, thick and 
thin light-coloured sandstones and hard silicious flags, with some more calcareous varieties, 
and in some places quantities of dun-colored and gray compact earthy or sandy limestone. 
Pale-purple sandstones and some highly ferruginous bands also occur, the whole presenting 
so many varieties of color and kind that its general lithological aspect is seen to differ from 
that of the uppermost Jurassic rocks, sufficiently to warrant an attempt at sub-division, 
only by regarding the group as a mass and leaving details aside. The passage from the 
lower beds to the upper is so gradual that no very definite boundary can be assigned between 
them. Still there is a difference at the extreme ends of the series which would at once 
prevent their being mistaken for each other, and which, it is supposed, led to their separation 
into two groups by Captaiu Grant. 
Owing to the numerous faults, undulations and the general lowness of their dip, the 
thickness ot this great series of Jurassic rocks is difficult to determine with accuracy, but it 
has been assumed, from observations in the part of the district lying eastward of Bhooj, to 
reach from 4,000 to 5.000 feet, of which measured sections of over 2,000 feet have been 
made in the lower portion of the group ; and there is no reason to suppose its aggregate 
thickness to he less in the western side of the province. Throughout this large accumula¬ 
tion of strata there is a marked absence of regular zones, indicating successive stages of 
deposition, and while in sueh an assemblage of coarse sandstones and muddy shales with 
trequent conglomeritic beds much constancy of lateral extension might not he looked for, 
and marks ol succeeding zones he probably obscure or absent, no want of material seems to 
have existed to supply new or similar layers for those which may have died out. The whole 
formation, particularly in its upper beds, maintains the same characteristics of obliquely 
laminated strata alternating with finer and more parallel deposits, all of richly varying tints, 
from black to white, blue, red, orange, brown and gray, and sometimes green with a peculiar 
golden oolite among the lower rocks which glistens like a.vanturine. 
The lower beds on weathering take frequently a rusty color, and dull olive tints are com¬ 
mon, while, where the beds are highly calcareous, a whole, mountain formed of them with 
rounded outlines and a whitish hue m sunshine looks cool, and in cloudy weather as gray 
as any granite hill. Thick bands of a warm orange sandy limestone with some red beds 
occur also in the lower rocks, and many of their shales are gypseous. 
The upper beds are marked by a predominance of clean white gravelly sandstone with 
some blackish ferruginous bands and while or lavender-gray, sometimes highly carbonaceous, 
shale. Between these and the lower beds alternations of almost every variety of rock in 
the formation occur, ranging through a vertical space equalling a third of the total thickness 
if not more. Many of the beds in both groups are strongly saline. 
The lowest beds are much the most fossiliferous, and the remains are chiefly marine, 
including Ammonites, JPleurotomaria, Ostrea, Trigonia, Cueullaa. Corbula, Grypkcea, 
MocHola , Terehratula, and numbers of other bivalves, JEchinida, Crinoids, Corals, Belemnites, 
fish teeth, reptilian bones, and fossil wood. 
In one certain and one or two doubtful instances some of the upper beds of this lower 
and marine series were found to contain impressions of (terrestrial) Zamira in shaly bands inter¬ 
posed between the marine shell-hearing beds. During the examination of Eastern Kutch, 
the most exhaustive search that could be made failed to find any thing among the upper 
rocks except these Zamias and a few other terrestrial plants, but in the west, in a few cases, 
some marine fossils have been obtained from single beds occurring amongst nufossiliferous 
strata of the upper portion of the rocks, hut still below the uppermost (white) beds seen. 
This alternation or intercalation of the marine and freshwater beds (presuming those, 
containing Zamira to be of purely freshwater deposition) being one of the points to which 
attention was specially directed, it is satisfactory to have so far ascertained the fact after 
many months of close search, even though such alternation appears to be much more limited 
than was supposed, unless it is taken for granted that the numerous fragmentary grass-like 
plant remains so common in the shales and flaggy sandstones throughout the formation 
are of freshwater deposition also. Many of fhese have been searched over and over again 
