PART 3.] 
Blanford: Geology of Bombay Presidency. 
87 
limestones; the whole, as far as seen near Mudebehal and Talikot, not exceeding 200 feet 
in thickness. The Kaladghi beds are of far greater thickness; the basement quartzites 
and conglomerates alone being many hundred feet thick; over which comes a great thickness 
of brecciated quartzite followed by the two great limestone and shale series above described 
and the upper quartzites which divide them. 
The limestones also differ in character, those occurring at and around Talikot being 
fine-grained lithographic limestones with few inclusions of chert, while those at Kaladghi 
are subcrystalline and full of chert both in laminae and in irregular nodular masses. 
Prom the differences above enumerated, it appears reasonable to conclude that the 
Mudebehal and Talikot beds are not continuations of those around Kaladghi, but 
members of another, and from its lesser degree of metamorphism in all probability a 
younger system of rocks. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that the quartzitic 
groups in the Madras Presidency are referable to two series—the lower or Kadapa series, 
probably representing the Gwalior series of Upper India, and the upper or Karntil scries, 
representing the Lower Viudhyans. Por convenience of description, the name of the town 
Kaladghi has been given to the series of beds occupying so large an area of the Gatparba 
valley, and that of the Bhlma series to the Mudebehal and Talikot beds, as they are far 
more extensively developed in the valley of the Bhlma river. The beds at the base of 
Phonda ghSt belong to the Kaladghi group. 
Above the Yindhyans there is found in Central India and Bengal a most important 
series of formations, to a portion of which the only coal beds worked on the Indian Peninsula 
belong. The various groups, including the Talehir, Damtida, Panchet, Maliadeva, &c., 
are largely developed in the Central Provinces ; but all disappear below the traps far to the 
east of the Bombay Presidency, and none of them have hitherto been detected along the 
southern edge of the trap area in Belgium, Dharwar, and Ratnagiri. 
The absence throughout the Bombay Presidency of the coal-hearing Damfida groups, so 
widely spread in the Central Provinces and South-Western Bengal, is a serious drawback to 
the commercial prosperity of the country, and, coupled with the rapidly progressing des¬ 
truction of the forests, threatens to leave a large portion of that Presidency as destitute of 
fuel as the Pan jab and parts of Madras. There appears to he but little hope of the dis¬ 
covery of useful coal in Western India in any large quantity. 
III.— Oolitic Series. 
The rocks of Kachh, first described by Captain Grant, have lately been examined by 
the Geological Survey. The formations below the trap occupy the northern half of the 
province and the hilly parts of the island in the Ran, and consist of two groups, the lower of 
which is distinguished by a prevalence of argillaceous beds, with which sandstones and lime¬ 
stones are intercalated, the upper group is marked by a predominance of coarse sandstone. 
The shales of the lower group vary in colour and consistency, and they sometimes 
contain gypsum. Ferruginous bands are less common than they are in the upper beds. 
Locally, fossil shells, always of marine forms, are common in these rocks. 
The sandstones of the upper group are white and felspathic, except towards the base, 
where they are brown in colour, and abound in ferruginous bauds and nodules. Throughout 
the whole, but far more sparingly than in the lower group, shales are scattered, containing 
plant remains, often fragmentary and undefined, but, when recognizable, consisting chiefly of 
cycads and ferns. Some of the shales are carbonaceous, and in a few localities, as at Trombo 
north of Blulj, lliin seams of coal have been met with, but none hitherto discovered have 
been sufficiently thick to repay extraction. 
