Page:Madras Journal of Literature and Science, series 1, volume 6 (1837).djvu/378

352 or six-sided, articulated, and from a foot to two feet and a half in diameter, and of various lengths; the lateral planes perfect, but in some instances the sharpness of the angles has been affected by weathering. The texture is close-grained, colour almost black, and they affect the needle.

At Jehoor, near the source of the Seena river, in an insulated hill, an obscure columnar disposition is met with in a rock, in which in other places I had not seen the slightest trace of it. A stratum of red, cellular, amygdaloid fifteen feet thick, has subcolumns in its exposed edges eight or ten feet in diameter. In the banks of a water-course running into the Hunga river, half a mile east of Parneir, on the elevated table-land between the cities of Ahmednuggur and Joonur, basaltic columns are very numerous, they are five or six feet high, not articulated, and are not quite perpendicular. This formation is evidently extensive, as the ends of columns, chiefly pentangular, appear in the bed of the water-course for some distance, forming a pavement of geometrical slabs. The ends of columns of different lengths also appear in the southern bank at intervals, forming flights of steps. The basalt of which these columns are composed is very close-grained, almost black, with shining specks of a metallic lustre. The rocky banks of the Kokree river at Jambut, in the plain of Joonur, exhibit a strong inclination to a large columnar structure. In the hill fort of Singhur, at an elevation of 4162 feet, at the western end of the fort, there is a sheet of rock which has the appearance of a pavement of pentangular slabs. The slabs are no doubt the terminal planes of basaltic columns. The same is observed in the hill fort of Hurreechundurghur, about seventy miles north of Singhur; also in the bed of a water-course one mile north-east of Barlonee, near the fortress of Purrunda, 112 miles east-south-east of Singhur; and, lastly, in the bed of the Mool river at Gorgaon, Poona collectorate. These pavements extend to Malwa, as Captain Dangerfield mentions their occurrence in the beds of the Chumbul and Nerbuddah (Nermada) rivers. The other localities of basaltic columns, or a marked disposition to this structure, were in a well at Kumlepoor, between the fortress of Purrunda and Barlonee, near the left bank of the Seena river; at Kheir Turruf Rasseen, in the face of a headland, abutting on the Beema river, on which the town stands; in the ascent to the temple of Boleshwur Turruf Sandus, Poona collectorate; and, finally,