COAL AND IKON OF CUTTACK. 11 



thickness and to improve in value or quality at a greater depth. " Top" 

 and " inferior" coal are terms often used as synonymous, and when 

 any coal exists at all, it is boldly recommended that, perhaps a shaft 

 should be sunk, perhaps workings on the bed should be commenced, 

 with the full expectation that other beds must be found, or that what is 

 seen must improve at a greater depth. Nothing could be more mistaken. 



It is indeed perfectly true, that exposure to ordinary atmospheric 

 action tends to decompose coal as well as every other rock. This decom- 

 position is rapidly expedited, if the coal should contain, as is frequently 

 the case, iron pyrites or iron ; and when such decomposition has taken 

 place in coal, nothing but a soft black earthy-looking substance will 

 remain. But in no case does this decomposition extend for more than 

 a few feet from the expo.sed surface ; and in every case when this occurs 

 all accompanying rocks (shales, sandstones, &c.) wiU invariably be found 

 to have suffered from the same destroying influences, and the whole group 

 will present such appearances of being decomposed and changed, that no 

 eye, which has had the slightest "practice in such observations, can easily 

 be misled. This weathering seldom extends to any distance, more 

 especially when the coal or other beds are seen exposed in the face of 

 cliffs, or in sections of river banks or ravines, and not on flat surfaces. 



But no amount of change whatever can possibly convert a shale into 

 a coal, nor is there the slightest ground for supposing, that beds which 

 at the surface are beds of shale will, " in depth," as miners term it, 

 become beds of coal. 



The iron produced in the Talcheer District has long been known 



as of excellent quality and highly prized for its 



Iron. 



tenacity. 



It is, in fact, like most of the iron produced by the native furnaces 



in India (when cleaned), " charcoal iron" of the 



Qua 1 y iron. ^^^ quality. The greater portion of the produce 



is sent to the Cuttack market. The manufacture is however, from 



