TALCHEER COAL FIELD. 61 



They do not re-appear to the West, as far as has been examined, any- 

 where except at Patrapara, as already mentioned, where they are seen 

 only in the deep ravine of the Medulea Nullah, which alone penetrates 

 to a sufficient depth to reach the strata concealed beneath the thick 

 alluvial deposit of the Ouli valley. 



These shales appear merely for the space of a few feet in the bants 

 of a nullah at Konkurapal, near Ungool, where they form the summit of 

 an anticlinal, and both to the North and South dip away beneath a 

 series of shales and grits sometimes fossiliferous. 



There is in these shales abundant carbon to support combustion, as is 



, . , , manifested by the beds being found sometimes 

 These shales highly ■' ° 



carbonaceous. completely burned and cemented on the surface 



into a substance resembling furnace clinkers, as is weU seen in the 

 Tengria Nullah, about 400 yards below Gopalprasad. On the Medulea 

 Nullah, opposite to Patrapara, the shales were seen burning : a large mass 

 had fallen from the bank of the nullah, and this with the adjacent beds 

 was on fire. This may have arisen from spontaneous combustion, the 

 Patrapara coal shale containing large quantities of iron pyrites, aggrec^ated 

 in small balls about half a line in diameter, and generally much 

 decomposed. At Gopalprasad and Talcheer this is not the case, 

 but it is easy to conceive how conflagration may have been caused 

 in various ways ; among others by jungle fires, especially amongst 

 loose masses, heaped up by the side of a dry nullah. Indeed, it is 

 probable that in this way alone has combustion arisen. The greater 

 part of the shales East of Gopalprasad appears to have undergone 

 at some former period this process of combustion, so that aU their 

 carbon is removed, and the beds have assumed a white porcellanous 

 appearance. 



The natives attribute this combustion to the fact of a deity havinw 

 taken up his abode in the beds, and accordingly expend large quantities 

 of ghi upon them, in honor of the resident. 



