414 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF FOSSIL FUELS. 



Ganges and Dwarka Rivers. Ball^° reports that the Talchir has 

 no coal but has Gangamopteris. The Barakar, in the northern part 

 of the area, consists of coarse, friable, feldspathic grits with white 

 argillaceous shales and a few seams of inferior coal. False-bedded 

 sandstones occur near the coals. 



The Jheria field^^ is on the northerly side of the Daniuda River 

 and its easterly boundary is about 170 miles above Calcutta in Ben- 

 gal. The Damuda and Talchir are not far from 6,800 feet thick. 

 The Raniganj, largely sandstone, seems to be without coal, and the 

 same condition marks the Talchir. Some carbonaceous shale in the 

 latter has ill-preserved remains of plants, among which is a form 

 closely allied to Glossopteris. The Barakar, consisting of clayey, 

 sandy or carbonaceous shales and shaly sandstones, with grits and 

 sandstones in the basal portion, has coal seams in all portions; but 

 these are thickest in the coarse lower part. At all horizons, these 

 are variable in thickness of coal and of partings ; pyrite is abundant 

 and the quantity of mineral matter renders the coal almost worthless. 



On the Chat Kurree Jour, some seams are very thick; Hughes 

 noted thicknesses of 50, 6, 5, 8, 13 feet. The thickest deposit is at 

 the base and is a mass of shale and bad coal ; but there is one seam, 

 almost 5 feet thick, which is fairly good bituminous coal with only 

 II per cent, of ash. Concretionary nodules were seen at several 

 localities ; the laminae of the enclosing coal cross the concentric 

 laminae ; the nodular coal is better than the enclosing material. The 

 characteristic plants are Glossopteris and Vertehraria; no marine 

 fossils were observed but there are freshwater limestones with 

 Melania, Paludina and Planorbis. The seams are extremely irregu- 

 lar and appear to be of limited horizontal extent. Hughes is confi- 

 dent that the absence in so many places cannot be due to faulting 

 and that the only explanation is that they are merely local deposits. 



The Raniganj field is west from the Jheria and 120 to 160 miles 

 northwest from Calcutta. There Blanford^^ found the Talchir rest- 



10 V. Ball, "Geology of the Rajmahal Hills," Mem. Geol. Survey of 

 India, Vol. XIII, 1877, pp. 155-248. 



11 T. Hughes, "The Jheria Coal-Field," Memoirs, Vol. V., 1866, pp. 

 227-236. 



12 W. T. Blanford, "On the Geological Structure and Relations of the 

 Raniganj Coal-Fields," Memoirs, Vol. III., 1865, pp. 1-195. 



