TALCHEEE COAL FIELD. 59 



This overlying bed (called in the Section the carbonaceous shale 

 bed of Gopalprasad), although a bed of very small 



Carbonaceous shales of . . . • . - 



Gopalprasad, &c.— 2 b. of extent, is by far the most interesting m the 



field, both geologically and economically. 



In it have been collected, with trifling exceptions, all the fossils found 



in the Talcheer basin. It is also the only bed 

 Importance. . . . s . „. ■ 



containing coal, though (even m it) not in suincient 



quantity to allow of its being worked. The beds consist essentially 



• of a very carbonaceous shale, through which 

 General character. 



are irregularly interspersed small seams of coal, 



varying in thickness from 3 inches to the most attenuated layer ; the 



shale, however, always predominating to a very great extent. The shale 



beds containing the coal (forming on an average one-fourth to one-third of 



the entire mass of the bed) are from 1 to 6 feet in thickness, the coal com- 



,^ , . , monlv occurring in lenticular patches running 



Mode of occurrence of •' ° ^ ^ 



*^« '=°^l- irregularly between the laminse. They have been 



always observed as overlying a clay bed of greater or less thickness. 



Beds of ferruginous clay, from 1 to 2 feet or more 



in thickness, occur at intervals in the carbonaceous 



shales, and one of these immediately overlying a shale bed in the large 



nullah West of Gopalprasad has with its associated beds yielded the 



maiority of the fossil stems, ferns, &c., as already 



Fossil remains in these J •/ 



stales. noticed. At Talcheer, besides glossopteris and 



pecopteris (both common), some marks resembling seed vessels, and one 

 possibly the spike of an equisetaceous plant, were found in a sandy shale 

 overlying the carbonaceous beds. These remams have not yet been 

 compared and defined, but doubtless many of them are identical with 

 some of those previously found in the Damoodah and Nagpur Coal 

 Fields. These carbonaceous shales occur only in three places, viz., at 

 Patrapara in Ungool on the banks of the Medulea Nullah, at 

 LocaUties of these car- Gopalprasad on Tengria Nullah, and on the banks 

 bonaceoua shales. ^j ^ ^^^y[ nullah about 1| mile from the Kajah's 



