sale. One of them (B. nepalensis) is a native of the Neelgheries and might be so used. Of cruciferæ we have only 5 or 6 species, while the Himalayas possess about 70, showing again how much that is an extra tropical order.

a frivo

We have now we trust, to the extent that our space would allow, proved to the satisfaction of every unprejudiced mind, that Botany, so far from being what we have heard it tauntingly called “ lous pursuit," "a profitless science" " a pretty amusement for ladies" is in truth a science founded on philosophical principles, one from which mankind have already derived many advantages, and from which, now that our modes of investigating

nature are

improving, they will yet derive many more; and consequently that the time spent in its study could not be better employed, so long as it is not allowed to interfere with the performance of those duties, which our respective stations in life necessarily impose.

With respect to the work which has afforded us a text for so long an article, we must say, that if it has not yet realized all the prospectus promises, it bids fair to do so before it is finished. It is true the chapter on the geographical distribution of the Flora of northern India, shows want of arrangement, and is in our opinion tedious and prolix, faults which might have been avoided by subdivision of the subject, and by throwing the numerous lists of plants which are scattered through the text, into a tabular from, which would have enabled the reader at a glance to have compared, those of one district with another, in place of wading through half a page at a time of hard names: and to have saved repetition he might have numbered the different places treated of, and to each plant added the number of each district where it was found. This defect however, scarcely detracts from the value of the work, which contains a vast mass of valuable information, and is, we suppose, to be attributed to the disadvantages under which Indian authors labour, who go home to publish on such subjects, in being from want of time, obliged to print before their manuscript is completed, preventing their revising, and if necessary recasting it before going to press. Bearing this in mind, and making the necessary allowance for it, we think the work highly creditable to the author, and worthy the encouragement of every lover of Natural history. His remarks on the natural orders are both interesting and instructive, and often display much classical research. Of the plates 18 are Botanical, one Zoological, and one Geological, they are in general well executed, and to the Amateur who purchases the work for study, economical,

as many of them contain several subjects, (34 plants in 18 plates). which is the more deserving of praise, as it must add greatly to the cost, and detracts somewhat from the appearance as works of art, by making them look crowded. We must now take leave of our author wishing him every success in the prosecution of his work.

Το

III.-Geology of the South of India.

The Editor Madras Journal

SIR,

of Literature and Science.

I am induced to request that you will give the following quotation from Sir J. Herschel's Introduction to the study of Natural Philosophy a place in your Journal, with the addition of some extracts and remarks, in the hope that they may lead to the communication of original information on the hitherto almost unknown geological constitution of the Peninsula. Herschel observes that " Geology in "the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, undoubtedly ranks, in the scale of the sciences, next to astronomy; "like astronomy, too, its progress depends on the continual accu"mulation of observations carried on for ages. But unlike astronomy, the observations on which it depends, when the whole ex"tent of the subject to be explored is taken into consideration, can hardly yet be said to be more than commenced." *** "The spi

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"rit with which the subject has been prosecuted for many years in our own country has been rewarded with so rich a harvest of sur"prising and unexpected discoveries, and has carried the investiga“tion of our island into such detail, as to have excited a corresponding spirit among our continental neighbours; while the same zeal "which animates our countrymen on their native shore accompanies "them in their sojourns abroad, and has already begun to supply a "fund of information respecting the geology of our Indian possessi

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ons, as well as of every other part where English intellect and re"search can penetrate." That the South of India may share in carrying on the investigations so happily commenced in Bengal, to which Herschel alludes, it is necessary that something should be generally known of what has been done in the districts to which we have access; these accounts are chiefly to be found in the Bengal Transactions and Journal, neither of which are much read in this

Presidency. It does not require any great knowledge of geology to collect facts which may be of great use; as I experienced during May last year when, in attending to the nature of the soils and of the rocks from the decomposition of which they were formed, with a view to trace their important influence in the production and on the charac ter of disease, I discovered perhaps the richest collection of fossils which has yet been found in India. This is my encouragement to expect, from the many well qualified persons who have abundant opportunities of examining the many interesting districts under this Presidency, communications which may be of important use to science and have most beneficial effects on more directly useful pursuits; I therefore beg you will republish from the Asiatic researches, vol. 18 and Gleanings vol. 1st, the following paper of Dr. Voysey's on the fossils of the Gawilgerh range, which forms the northern boundary of the province which should fall to the lot of the Madras enquirers, and forms an important part of that vast extent of igneous rocks of which the President of the Geological Society in the last anniversary address to that body observed, that they extend over 200,000 square miles, so that the mind is almost lost in the contemplation "of their grandeur: unfortunately the relative age of these eruptions must remain for the present undetermined, no vestiges of secondary or tertiary formations having been detected within the region described."

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On some petrified Shells, found in the Gawilgerh range of Hills, in April, 1823.

BY THE LATE H. W. VOYSEY, ESQ.

Assistant Surgeon His Majesty's 67th Foot.

"This remarkable range of hills is called, by Arrowsmith, in his last map, the Bindeh, or Bindachull (Vindhya or Vindhyachala) hills. The same name is, however, given to a lofty range of hills on the left bank of the Godaverí, as it passes through Gondwana, and also to those near Gualior. I shall, therefore, distinguish them by the name of the Gawilgerh range, particularly as, after repeated enquiries, I have never been able to discover that they were so designated either by the inhabitants of those hills or of the neighbouring plains. They take their rise at the confluence of the Púrna and Tapti rivers, and running nearly E. and by N. terminate at a short distance beyond the sources of the Tapti and Wurda. To the southward, they are bounded by the valley of Berar, and to the north, by the course

of the Tapti. The length of the range is about one hundred and sixty English miles, and average breadth, from twenty to twentyfive miles."

"On the southward side they rise abruptly from the extensive plain of Berar, the average height of which is one thousand feet above the level of the sea, and tower above it to the height of two and three thousand feet. The descent to the bed of the Tapti is equally rapid, although the northern is less elevated than the southern side of the range. The outline of the land is generally flat, but much broken by ravines and by groupes of flattened summits, and isolated conoidal frustra. The summits and the flat land are generally remarkably destitute of trees, but thickly covered by long grass. In the ravines and passes of the mountains, the forest is very thick, and, in many places, almost impervious. The inhabitants are principally Goands, whose language, manners, and customs differ remarkably from those of the Hindus. At present, their chief occupation is hunting and cultivating small patches of land, which produce a coarse rice and millet. In former years, the cultivation must have been very extensive, since there are the ruins of numerous hill-forts and villages, which derived their chief subsistence from the surrounding lands."

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Many opportunities are afforded of studying the nature of this mountainous range in the numerous ravines, torrents, and precipitous descents, which abound in every part. A Wernerian would not hesitate in pronouncing them to be of the "newest floetz-trap formation," a Huttonian would call them overlying rocks, and a modern Geologist would pronounce, that they owed their origin to submarine volcanoes."

"I shall not give them any other name, than the general one of traprocks; but proceed to describe them, and state with diffidence the inferences which, I think, obviously present themselves on an attentive study of their phenomena."

"1st. The principal part of the whole range is formed of compact basalt, very much resembling that of the Giant's Causeway. It is found columnar in many places, and at Gawilgerh, it appears stratified the summits of several ravines presenting a continued stratum of many thousand yards in length."

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2dly. The basalt frequently and suddenly changes into a wacken, of all degrees of induration, and, I may say, of every variety of composition usually found among trap-rock;"

"3dly. Into a rock which may be named indifferently,nodular-wack

en or nodular-basalt, composed of nuclei of basalt, usually of great specific gravity, surrounded by concentric layers of a loose earthy mass, resembling wacken, but without cohesion, which, on a superficial view, conveys to the mind the idea of a fluid mass of earth, having, in its descent from some higher spot, involved in its course all the rounded masses it encountered, and, subsequently, become consolidated by drying. A very slight inspection is sufficient to detect the true cause of this appearance, which is owing to the facilities of decomposition of the outer crust, depending on difference of structure and composition. In none of the conglomerates, or pudding stones, do we observe any traces of this structure, and as it is common to the most crystalline green-stone, porphyritic green-stone, and those rocks usually denominated syenite, there can be little doubt that it is owing to the developement of a peculiar concretionary structure by decomposition. In a small ravine, near the village of Sálminda, two thousand feet above the sea, I saw basalt of a perfectly columnar structure, closely connected with a columnar mass formed of concentric lamellæ, enclosing a heavy and hard nucleus. Near this ravine, I had also an opportunity of observing the gradual and perfect passage of the columnar basalt into that which has been called stratified, from the parallelism of its planes; the composition being identical, and, without doubt, cotemporaneous. These changes and passages, from one rock into the other, are so frequent and various, as to render it impossible to refer the most of them to either of the rocks I have abovementioned, as types. I shall, therefore, proceed to describe those which are distinctly marked, and their accompanying minerals. In external appearance, the columnar and semi-columnar basalt closely resembles that of the Giant's Causeway, possessing the same fracture, internal dark colour, and external brown crust. It is equally compact and sonorous. It, however contains, more frequently, crystals of olivine, of basaltic hornblende, and of carbonate of lime. The fusibility of each is the same. Perhaps the basalt of the Gawilgerh range, more nearly resembles, in every respect, that of the Pouce mountain in the Mauritius. This is, however, of very little importance, since every body who has travelled much in trap countries, knows well what great changes in composition and structure occur even in continuous masses. Among the minerals, calcedony, and the different species of zeolite, are rarely found in the columnar basalt, but they are of frequent occurrence in, that which is semi-columnar. The wacken, or indurated clay, is as various in character and composition, as the basalt, and, unfortu