16. 'Many years ago Dr. Spry (_Note on the Fossil Palms and Shells lately discovered on the Table-Land of Sâgar in Central India_, in _J.A.S.B._ for 1833, vol. ii, p. 639) and, subsequently to him, Captain Nicholls (_Journal of Asiatic Soc. of Bombay_, vol. v, p. 614), studied and described certain trunks of palm-trees, whose silicified remains are found imbedded in the soft intertrappean mud- beds near Sâgar. . . . The trees are imbedded in a layer of calcareous black earth, which formed the surface soil in which they grew; this soil rests on, and was made up of the disintegration of, a layer of basalt. It is covered over by another and similar layer of the same rock near where the trees occur. . . . The palm-trees, now found fossilized, grew in the soil, which, in the condition of a black calcareous earthy bed, we now find lying round their prostrate stems. They fell (from whatever cause), and lay until their silicification was complete. A slight depression of the surface, or some local or accidental check of some drainage-course, or any other similar and trivial cause, may have laid them under water. The process of silicification proceeded gradually but steadily, and after they had there, in lapse of ages, become lapidified, the next outburst of volcanic matter overwhelmed them, broke them, partially enveloped, and bruised them, until long subsequent denudation once more brought them to light' (J. G. Medlicott, in _Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India_, vol. ii. Part II, pp. 200, 203, 204, 205, 216, as quoted in _C. P. Gazetteer_ (1870), p. 435). The intertrappean fossils are all those of organisms which would occur in shallow fresh-water lakes or marshy ground. Besides the author's friend and relative, Dr. H. H. Spry, Dr. Spilsbury contributed papers on the Nerbudda fossils to vols. iii, vi, viii, ix, x, and xiii of the _J.A.S.B._ Other writers also have treated of the subject, but it appears to be by no means fully worked out. James Prinsep, to whom no topic came amiss, discussed the Jubbulpore fossil bones in the volume in which Dr. Spry's paper appeared. Dr. Spry was the author of a work entitled _Modern India: with Illustrations of the Resources and Capabilities of Hindustan_ (2 vols. 8vo, 1838). He became F.R.S. CHAPTER 15 Legend of the Sâgar Lake--Paralysis from eating the Grain of the _Lathyrus sativus_.