Allusion has already been made to the effects of denudation, produced by the Godavari and its tributaries, in the soft or easily decomposed rocks, that compose the broad valley to the south. The river has a slight fall lower down, and forms a broad alluvial plain where it traverses softer beds; but cuts a steeper slope in the harder rocks which it encounters in the higher parts of its course. The superficial accumulations of detrital matter constitute the alluvium of the valley, and extend in variable depths from twenty to fifty feet along the bank of the Godavari. The upper portions of the deposit consist of a brownish clay, abounding in nodules of kankar, or impure carbonate of lime. The more massive forms of calcareous tufa frequently fill up the cracks in the alluvial deposits, but sometimes they form thick beds. At the base of the alluvium, and immediately upon the underlying trap, there are water-worn pebbles and angular fragments of zeolite, chalcedony, bloodstone, and agates, which have been consolidated by carbonate of lime into a hard conglomerate. Bones of mammalia have been found in this gravelly deposit; and in 1848 the remains of a fossil elephant were found by Brigadier Twemlow, commanding at Aurangabad, in the banks of the Goda’vari below Toka. The cranium was identified by Dr. Falconer as belonging to the extinct Elephae mamalicus. Dr. Bradley found fragments of a huge tusk firmly imbedded in the conglomerate near Rakisbon. The bank here is about 58 feet deep, and is thus arranged:—
| Feet. | |
| Vegetable mould | 1 |
| Loosely aggregated fluviatile, a reddish deposit of buff tinge, much intermixed with calcareous nodules and veins, the whole confusedly startified | 40 |
| Fine Laminated silt. | 3 |
| Conglomeratic bed of large water-worn pebbles of chalcedony, agate, &c.; the surface with an indurated crust of calcareous matter ridging it in waving forms | 1 |
| Similar concrete of dark water-worn pebbles irregularly, disposed, the upper part formed of finer particles imbedded in calcareous matter, with undulating ridge marks on its exterior surface. The lower portion a pebbly calcareous marl, enveloping the fossil……. | 3 |
| Porphyritic trap with tubular crystals of felspar, and much intersected with caleareous and earthy veins. | 6 |
| Pink amygdaloidal trap | 3 |
| Total |
The fossil bed thins out towards the east, and changes its calcareous silt into reddish clay, which envelopes the silicious pebbles in globular lumps, and differs only from the prevailing red amygdaloid of the district by being less coherent. Eventually it disappears under the bank overlaid by globular basalt.
The cranium before alluded to was found by Brigadier Twemlow near Paitan; and be also found the lower head of a femur, and what appeared to be a portion of the tibia, in the neighbourhood of Toka, Bones of Bos and other animals occur in this deposit.
From the gravels near Munji and Paitan, Mr. Wynne of the Geological Survey of the government of India, obtained an agate flake, apparently of human manufacture, thus affording a trace of man occurring in the post-tertiary river gravels. ” The river-cliff here has a height of about fifty feet, and in a bed of uncompacted sub-calcareous conglomerate or concrete, gravelly, and containing shells of a species similar to those now living in the neighbourhood, the specimen was found imbedded,” about twenty feet above the base of the cliff. Similar gravel deposits are met with in the larger tributaries of the Godavari, and one instance may be mentioned on the banks of the Purna near Kirala, but no fossil remains were found.
