OF CENTRAL INDIA AND BENGAL. 313 



To elucidate the history of these beds a little more clearly, it will be 

 necessary to revert to earlier researches, and at the same time to anti- 

 cipate to some extent the publication of matter of great interest and im- 

 portance in Indian Geology. 



In the year 1854 a brief summary of the results of an examination of 

 the Rajmahal hills, which had been made during the cold seasons of 

 1852-53, was published, (a) In that abstract, I insisted upon the marked 

 separation which existed physically between the " coal-bearing" rocks 

 which occurred in all cases beneath the great overflowing sheets of 

 trappean matter, and those inter-trappean beds which had been tranquilly 

 deposited upon, and again subsequently covered up by, the successive 

 outbursts of those ancient lavas. While thus necessarily unconformable, 

 it was shewn also that this very marked physical break in continuity 

 was accompanied by a continuance of the same general conditions and 

 kind of deposit. Thus, while thick and useful beds of coal might not 

 be found in the upper system, as they were in the lower, still the 

 conditions for it's formation existed, as was evident from the frequent 

 occurrence of thin layers or beds of bituminous shale, and in several 

 cases of carbonized stems, and fragments of plants. 



The entire series* in the then state of our knowledge of the contained 

 plants, was considered to represent one great system or formation, mark- 

 ing only one continuous but great interval of time; but at the same time 

 capable of most ready and most marked separation into two groups, the 

 upper and lower. We shall allude again to the fossil evidence. 



To this upper series, we had for years appropriated the distinctive 

 name of the Rajmahal series. 



Such being our information up to the time of Mr. Medlicott's labors in 

 the Nerbudda, he found there a series of rocks which in very many res- 

 pects agreed with these Rajmahal beds ; namely, in being unconform- 

 ably superimposed on the true coal-bearing or Damuda rocks; while at 



(a) Jour. Asiat. Soc. Bengal Vol. XXIII p. 263. 



2 D 



