OF CENTRAL INDIA AND BENGAL. 201 



Journal, e On the age of the coal strata in Western Bengal and Central 

 India', by the Rev. S. Hislop,* in which he strenuously combated this 

 view of the possibility of these coal rocks being older than Oolitic, with 

 great skill and zeal ; but with arguments which could have but very 

 little weight, inasmuch as there had been no critical examination 

 of the fossil plants, on which he based his conclusions, and as the 

 supposed resemblance to known species was far indeed from involving 

 identity. 



In 1856 again, the Permian analogies ^of the reptiliferous beds of 

 Mangali were insisted on,f while I stated that no additional evidence 

 had been obtained, tending to settle the question one way or the other. 

 The same palaeozoic view of their epoch was again urged more 

 definitely in these Memoirs, f And when the establishment of a Museum 

 of Geology in Calcutta enabled me to carefully examine the fossils and 

 to obtain the necessary works of reference for their comparison, I gave 

 at some length the results, as already noticed, in the previous paper 

 referred to, where I have shown that, from physical evidence alone, the 

 Rajmahal group of our classification must be considered as older than 

 the Lower Oolitic stage of European Geology — and that this Rajma- 

 hal group is separated by a total change in its flora, accompanied by a 

 strongly marked unconformity attesting the lapse of considerable time, 

 from the Damtida beds below : and that, therefore, these Damuda beds 

 must, in all probability, "belong to some portion of the upper Palaeozoic 

 division of European Geological sequence, or to the lowermost portion 

 of the Mesozoic division. In fact, we may possibly hereafter find 

 that it will represent that great interval indicated by the marked 

 separation and great break between the two series mother countries."§ 

 Meanwhile other evidence of the occurrence of rocks of an older date 



* Jour. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, vol. xxiv. 1-855, p. 347. 



f Ibd., vol. xxv. 1856, p. 251. 



t Vol. i., pp. 81-82. 



§ Mem. Geol. Surv, of India, vol, i., p. 333, 



B 2 



