PART 3 .] 
Oldham : Geology of the Central Provinces. 
73 
We are not as yet able to speak so certainly of the limits and relations of the beds which 
occur immediately above these coal-bearing rocks, so far at least as parts of the country under 
notice are concerned. In the Narbada valley coarse conglomeratic sandstones with ferrugi¬ 
nous bands, which are believed to be the representatives of the Panchet rocks of Bengal, 
come in immediate succession on the Bardlcar beds (Mohpam, &c.). And similar rocks 
occur in the same relation in the wide flats of Chliattisgarh, and probably at the inter¬ 
mediate locality of the Chhindwara fields. 
Kamthi sub-group. 
But passing into the drainage basin of the Godavari, a series of rocks of peculiar 
lithological character and locally abounding in fossil 
plants, is met with, no exact representatives of which 
are as yet known elsewhere. In their general mineral aspects they come very near to the 
ordinary Panchet rocks of Bengal, and they appear to pass upwards into undoubted 
representatives of these, but the prevailing form of fern of which they contain the fossilised 
fronds, is one (Glossopteris browniana) which is scarcely known to extend up to the Panchet 
horizon. These beds would therefore seem to indicate either a commencement in the basin 
of the Godavari of the deposition of rocks having the peculiar mineral character of the 
Panchet beds at a much earlier period than in Bengal into which these ferns continued to 
exist: or the flora of the Godavari basin had not been subjected to the same influencing 
causes, resulting in a marked change in its character, which in Bengal led to the well- 
defined separation as to fossils of the Panchet and upper groups of the Damudd rocks 
(Raniganj). I am disposed to think that, viewed in a very general way, it gives the truer 
representation of the facts to consider these local rocks, notwithstanding their contained plants, 
as belonging rather to the Panchet series them to the Damudd. And there is one very im¬ 
portant practical reason for this also, inasmuch as no workable coal has yet been found in 
either of these groups, while it has invariably been seen to occur where rocks of the un¬ 
doubted Damridd ago arc developed. 
A local name was provisionally given to these rocks by Mr. W. Blanford, who fii'st 
examined them, and as this has been published (although unintentionally), it may be retain¬ 
ed as a useful sub-division. One of the largest areas of these rocks in the Nagplir 
country is close to the important military station of Kamtlil, and from this circumstance 
Mr. Blanford spoke of them as the Kdmthi beds. They consist, lithologically, of hard 
compact gritty sandstones, fine variegated sandstones, coarse loose-textured sandstone, very 
fine-grained deep and bright red and buff argillaceous or argillaceo-silicions sandstones, and 
hands of hard very ferruginous pebbly grits. 
These rocks cover an area of about twenty-five miles long from north-west to south¬ 
east near Kamthi (Kamthi to Kelod), and at the broadest parts (near Patansaongi) 
about eight miles wide. Over a large portion of this area the rocks are concealed by thick 
alluvial deposits, hut they are well seen at Kamthi, Silewara, Bhokara, and south and 
south-east of Patansaongi, &c. A small area of the much older Tdlchtr rocks is seen north¬ 
east of Bhok&ra, and a small hill north-east of Patansaongi. Two other localities where 
these rocks are seen have been exposed within the area of the trap-rocks, these having been 
removed by denudation. One—the larger of the two—is close to Bob dr and Bazsirgaon, 
about fifteen miles from N flgpfir on the road to Amraotf. The rocks here are of the 
same type, but becomo more conglomeratic towards the top than Is seen near Nagpur. The 
other inlier of these rocks is about thirty-six miles north-west of Nagpfir, near the village 
of Chorkheri. The rocks extend over an area of only about six and a half square miles 
in all. There,is also anothor very small patch not a mile long near Khdtkheri, about one 
mile south-east of the other. 
