KHASI HILLS. 14,7 



ness and in great mass, but as in the other localities, very irregular. 

 There appear at first to be two beds here ; but I am disposed to consider 

 it all the same bed. This appearance arises from the same parting of 

 hard black shale, which when first seen was not more than a foot in 

 thickness, having here assumed a thickness of not less than two feet 

 six inches to three feet, and being used as a division between the series 

 of workings. The coal has been wrought in open adits. The upper 

 portion or bed is about four feet ten inches to five feet thick ; it is frao-ile 

 soft, and easily broken, and produces in working a very large amount of 

 small coal, I should say very nearly one-half, certainly one-third. Under 

 this is the parting of hard shale varying from two feet three inches to 

 three feet in thickness, below which there are again other adits driven 

 into the coal below. This lower bed is in one place at least eight feet 

 thick, but within a short space it dwindles to four feet. The roof of the 

 coal here is sandstone, of the same lithological character as in the other 

 localities. It is from seven to eight feet thick. The floor is composed 

 of sandstone, in irregular beds, less gritty than that above the coaL 

 About eighteen feet below the coal and these irregular beds of sandstone, 

 we find thick limestone fuU of nummulites, and in every other respect 

 similar to the limestone under the coal at Cherra. We are enabled to 

 see this by the falling-in of an old cave in the limestone, by which a 

 deep hole has been formed towards the northern end of the croom. The 

 coal in this locality dips slightly to the North-East, but, from the 

 irregular development of the beds, it is difficult to say that it has any 

 definite dip at all. 



Precisely the same beds have again been worked a little to the 

 North of this (about 50 yards), dipping here 30° South of East at an 

 angle of 8°. They have scarcely been cut into, the excavation not having 

 extended more than four feet from the face of the rock. There is here a 

 simUar parting of hard shale, of about the same thickness, and of 

 the same lithological character as in the other localities. 



G 



