June 17, 1868.
Charles Baron Clarke, Esq., F.L.S., Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge, Barrister-at-law, Dacca, Hindoostan; and Flaxman Charles John Spurrell, Esq., Belvedere, S.E., were elected Fellows.
The following commnnications were read:—
The circumstances under which chipped implements, similar in form to those occurring in the gravels of Western Europe, are found over a considerable part of Southern India[1] are very interesting, as they appear to prove that great changes in the physical geography of the Indian peninsula have taken place since the time when the implement-makers first inhabited the country.
By far the greatest number of the chipped-stone implements have been found in close connexion with the laterite deposits of the eastern coast. Many implements were found in situ, buried in the laterite; and many more lay scattered over the surface of the laterite, from which they had evidently been weathered out. A considerable number also were collected off the surface of underlying older rocks, in places where laterite deposits had once existed, but had subsequently been almost entirely removed by denudation, and had often left but faint traces, in the shape of scattered debris. Other implements, again, have been discovered on the surface in other parts of the country, where no distinct traces could be seen of the formations from which they might have been weathered out. Whatever may have been the nature of these latter deposits, the great elevation at which they occur above the lower country precludes, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, the idea that they were of the same marine origin as the coast laterite.
It is not at all improbable that they may once have been enveloped in freshwater deposits which have since been destroyed by denuding agencies, while only the heaviest included bodies, such as the coarse shingle and implements, were left behind as evidences of the former existence of such formations.
Besides the above, a few implements have also been found in un- questionably fluviatile formations; but none have been obtained from any deposits known to be more ancient than the laterite, nor have the younger alluvia, whether marine or fluviatile, yielded any that could not be shown to have been washed down from immediately adjoining lateritic beds.
The position occupied by the laterite along the coast is that of a belt running parallel with the general coast-line, but broken through
- ↑ For an account of the discovery of these implements see the 'Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,' 1844, p. 67; also 'Madras Journal of Literature and Science,' October 1866 (third series, pt. 2):—"On the occurrence of Stone implements in Lateritic formations in various parts of the Madras and North Arcot Districts," by E. Bruce Foote, Geological Survey of India, with notes by William King, jun., BA., Geological Survey of India.
Some copies of this paper were struck off and circulated in June 1865.
