Geological papers on western India, including Cutch, Sinde and the south-east coast of Arabia : to which is appended a summary of the geology of India generally / edited for the Government by Henry J. Carter.

Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Geological papers on western India, including Cutch, Sinde and the south-east coast of Arabia : to which is appended a summary of the geology of India generally / edited for the Government by Henry J. Carter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    342/834 (page 328)
    Sketch of the Geology of the Southern Mahratta Country. By Alexander Turnbull Christie, M.D. [Reprinted from the Madras Journal of Literature and Science, vol. iv. p. 452, et seq.—183G.—Ed.] Geognosy.—The geognostical arrangement of the rocks of the Indian Peninsula is everywhere very simple ; and a great uniformity prevails throughout the whole country, from Cape Comorin even as far as the Ganges. The same formation, in many instances, extends uninter- ruptedly for several hundred miles in the same direction, and conse- quently that great variety, and those frequent changes within a short distance, which are so conspicuous in Britain, are seldom met with among the rocks of India. The principal rocks in the peninsula of India are granite, transition rocks, old red sandstone, trap rocks, and, superior to all these, a ferruginous claystone. The Darwar district, and the adjoining coast, contain specimens of all these rocks, and will, therefore, serve as an example of the general geognostical structure of the Peninsula. Granite.—This appears to be the most abundant rock in the Penin- sula of India. It stretches, with few interruptions, from Cape Comorin to beyond Nagpore and Ellichpore, occupying a great part of the Carnatic, Malabar, and Mysore, nearly the whole of the Nizam’s domi- nions, and a large part of Barar.* * * § It is also met with in many places still further north, namely, in Malwa,f Bundelcund4 and in the neigh- bourhood of Delhi ; § and Lieutenant Gerard found some of the highest of the Himalaya mountains to be principally composed of it. || All the eastern part of the Southern Mahratta Dooab from the Sungum^y of the Kistnah and Tumboodra, to near the British frontier, consists of granite ; but west of that, namely, in the British territory, it only occurs occasionally, protruding in a few spots through the schists, by which it is covered. It also occurs in the southern parts of the district ; the Mysore granite extending, in some places, as far as, but seldom much * I state this principally upon the authority of the late Dr. Voysey, whom I met at Hyder- abad, in 1823 ; and I myself travelled through a great part of the Nizam’s dominions. f Vide Malcolm’s Central India, vol. ii. appendix. + Vide Transactions of the Wernerian Society of Edinburgh, vol. iv. p. 26. § Vide Transactions of the Geological Society of London, new series, vol. i. pp. 1, 2. || Ibid, p. 127, et seq. ^1 Sungum signifies the angle of laud formed by the junction of two rivers.