230 Revieus — Y. Ball's Jungle Life in India. 



establish a regular system of operations.^ Since that period the 

 important results of this Survey have been made known to us in the 

 " Memoirs," "Eecords," and " Palasontologia Indica." The geologist 

 in this country will perhaps have but a vague idea of the work that 

 has to be carried on in order to interpret the structure of many parts 

 of our Indian Empire. Here a sling-bag will contain all our needful 

 apparatus, and we can pursue our observations over every acre of 

 land. There one needs to be accompanied by a score or more of 

 servants, including a native doctor, an elephant, bullocks, horses, 

 dogs, and all the materials for camp-life ; and there the chief 

 geological sections are those exhibited in the river-channels. Here 

 the structure, arrangement, and life-history of our great groups of 

 rocks are well ascertained, and we are now entering into almost 

 tedious detail and controversy in the naming and correlating of sub- 

 divisions, often but a few feet in thickness. There the majority of 

 sections to be visited have been unseen by geological eyes, the rocks 

 must be grouped in a large way, and the boundaries, that may often be 

 accurately fixed in the rocky gorges cut out by the streams, must be 

 marked across large tracts of country in accordance with the physical 

 features, checked only by traverses here and there. 



In the work before us Mr. Ball has given an account of his wander- 

 ings during a period of fourteen years, while engaged on the Indian 

 Geological Survey. The account is made up of the notes extracted 

 in chronological order from his Journals ; and they relate chiefly to 

 the Zoology, Botany, and Antiquities, besides which are not a few 

 descriptive of the various tribes of men. Mr. Ball is an accomplished 

 naturalist and evidently an ardent sportsman, though, whether he 

 would or not, the encounters with many a tiger or bear, not to men- 

 tion other unfriendly wanderers and visitants, were to be anticipated 

 by one engaged in such districts as Mr. Ball had to examine. Snakes 

 do not appear to have been so troublesome as most Europeans would 

 expect. 



The field-work of the Survey in Bengal usually commences about 

 November and lasts until the end of April, by which time fever too 

 frequently compels a speedy return to Calcutta. At all times, 

 however, attacks of fever are sources of anxiety, and Mr. Ball men- 

 tions that during two months (November and December) in the 

 Singhbhum disti-ict, out of twenty-seven men, only three escaped 

 illness. A good deal of his attention was bestowed upon the Coal- 

 districts ; but as reports of all the explorations have been published, 

 Mr. Ball here confines himself to brief and general notices of the 

 geology. In the Bokaro Coal-field he mentions one seam 90 feet in 

 thickness ! The Eanigunj Coal-field, known as early as 1774, and 

 worked a few years later, comprises an area of 500 square miles 

 of coal-bearing rocks, and is known as the " black country " of 

 India, being the largest and most important of the areas in which 

 coal is worked. 



Formerly a large proportion of the coal was obtained by quarries 



^ See article on the Geological Survey of India, in the Quart. Journ. Science, 

 Oct. 1870, p. 458. 



