'Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society, from September 1850 to June 1852. Edited by the Secretary. Volume X.' [‎212] (345/458)

212
GEOLOGY OF BOMBAY.
inthe native Town,—of which I have been fortunate enough to obtain
a magnificent collection of Minerals, of the Zeolite family, ihe finest of
which were laumonites of most singular beauty. The Crystals of tho
different minerals often lie over each other, layer above layer; in one
instance a specimen of perfectly transparent selenite found in a cavity
and trap is partly covered over with crystals of calcareous spar and
apophyllite.
With the exception of laterite (referred to at length hereafter) I am
not sure I can venture on enumerating any of the exogenous rocks
found in Bombay as strictly speaking transported. Granite, quartz,
and limestone, in a variety of forms, are to be found on our shores, but
the great bulk of them appear to have come as ship ballast; and I have
y|
found none so situated as to warrant the assumption of their deposit
there by natural causes.
PAPERS ON THE SUBJECT.
An Account op the Geology of Bombay was published in
1836, in the Madras Literary Journal, by Dr. Thompson. It is meagre
and imperfect ; and be makes no mention of the stratified rocks which
form so important a characteristic of this part of the Konkan. There
is a paper by Dr. Lush, in the Transactions of the Bengal Asiatic
Society for 1834, on the Geology of the Northern Konkan, in whicli
theie is a short notice of Bombay to be met with. He assumed, as has
already been seen, that it was a single mass of stratified rocks, and that
this lay above our traps. Mr. George Clark gives, in his notice of the
Geology of this neighbourhood, a short but clear and correct outline of
the fiesh water formations of the island ; and this is all of which lam
aware that has been published upon the subject. The present paper owes
its origin to some experiments to reclaim the flats, in which I was engaged
from 1846 to 1848, and of which an account was desired by the Court of
Directors ; and to the excavations on my own grounds in preparing a
site for the School of Industry at Sewree.—The spectacle of some
thousands of acies of fine promising ground, just iu the neighbourhood
of half a million of people, with an unbounded supply of manure
and fiesh water close at hand, seemed so singular that I determined to
make the experiment of washing out the salt which rendered the flats
unproductive, and to endeavour to bring them into garden cultiva
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