520 Geological Society. 



inches, it is found to pass into indurated ferruginous clay, which 

 continues, with but little variation, to a depth of 208 feet. Here 

 another layer of sandstone, soft in its upper portion, but becoming 

 more indurated, and assuming the lamellar structure as it is passed 

 through, occurs ; the thickness being, however, no more than three 

 feet. Ferruginous sand, with thin beds of calcareous and arenaceous 

 clay, prevail from 208 feet to 380. Kankur, with minute water- worn 

 fragments of quartz, felspar, granite, and other indications of debris 

 from primary rocks, are met with in the lower parts of this sandy de- 

 posit, in which were also found three fragments of bones, of which one 

 was considered by Mr. J. Prinsep to be the lower half of a humerus of 

 some small quadruped like a dog, and another the fragment of the 

 carapace of a turtle. At 380 feet, there occurred a thin layer, only 

 two feet in thickness, of blue calcareous clay, thickly studded with 

 fragments of shells; and at 382 feet, this was succeeded by a layer 

 of dark clay, composed almost entirely of decayed wood. From the 

 lower portion of it several fragments of coal, of excellent quality, 

 were brought up. Underneath this stratum, and in the gravelly 

 bed which immediately succeeds it, there were found several other 

 fragments of fossil bones. One was considered to be a caudal ver- 

 tebra of a kind of lizard, and the rest were fragments of turtles. 

 These were discovered at the depth of 423 feet, and were associated 

 with large rolled pebbles of quartz, both white and amethystine, 

 felspar, limestone, and indurated clay. The gravel, composed en- 

 tirely of the debris of primary rocks, continued to the depth of 481 

 feet, where the operations ceased. 



The fossils recorded above, observes the author, were found in two 

 distinct deposits, separated from each other by the interposition of 

 a bed of shelly, calcareous clay and a deposit of carbonaceous matter 

 ten feet in thickness, the remnants of some extensive forest which 

 flourished at a period anterior to the deposit of the 380 feet of su- 

 perincumbent sands and clays. The lithological characters of the 

 superior and inferior fossiliferous deposits differ considerably from 

 each other, the former being a fine and slightly indurated sandstone, 

 the latter a coarse conglomerate, formed of the debris of primary 

 rocks, imbedded in an arenaceous matrix. The fossils of the upper 

 bed, which is about eighty feet in thickness, furnish the only speci- 

 mens of mammalia obtained during the operations. These were as- 

 sociated with the remains of Chelonians, but no indications of the 

 existence of saurian animals were discovered till the shelly clay and 

 carbonaceous bed were passed through, and from the lower conglo- 

 merate no mammalia were obtained. In drawing any conclusions, 

 however, the limited space examined, the diameter of which wasjtot 

 more than six inches, must be borne in mind. 



Lieut. Smith remarks the correspondence of the succession of the 

 strata in the Gangetic Delta, at a depth of from 350 to 480 feet, 

 with that observed by Captain Cautley at the base of the Himalaya. 



The nature of the fossil remains and the dimensions of the gravel 

 found at 480 feet from the surface of the ground, the greatest depth 

 hitherto attained, were such as to lead Dr. M'Clelland to the con- 



