AURCNGA FIELD: TALCHIR GROUP. 57 



occupied by beds of somewhat anomalous character, and the deter- 

 Abnormal Talchirs at mination of the age of which was a source of con- 

 Latiahar. siderable uncertainty to me. 



The litholog-ical characters are so unusual and peculiar that, until 

 I met with some rather similar rocks among the Talchir beds in the 

 narrow strip at the extreme end of the field, near Hosir, I was unable 

 to bring myself to believe that they should be relegated to that age. 



At the base of the section near Nowadih there are yellow sandstones 

 exposed in the bed of the stream ; these are overlaid by greyish yellow 

 shales with some gritty beds, including one which is calcareous and con- 

 tains small fragments of metamorphic rocks. With these shales there 

 are thin papery carbonaceous layers, which confer a most un-Talchir 

 aspect to the beds. The shales differ from ordinary Talchirs in being 

 more fibrous and in seldom shewing the characteristic concentric struc- 

 ture and splintery fracture. In some respects they resemble more nearly 

 certain beds which, in this area, have been referred to the Ranigaiij 

 group, but the stratigraphical relations are such as to render it impossi- 

 ble to refer them to any group younger tiian Barakars. 



They rest directly on the gneiss and dip steadily southwards towards 

 the fault, the Barakars having the same general direction, modified by 

 anticlinal rolls on the other side of it. 



The occurrence of distinctly visible carbonaceous matter in rocks of 

 Talchir age is not unprecedented, as I have already recorded a case which 

 I met with in Sirguja, where there was actually a thin layer of coal of 

 very inferior quality. 



On the whole, it seems impossible to classify these rocks otherwise 

 than as being Talchirs. The existence or non-existence of a fault does 

 not materially affect the case, as from the dips the beds on the north 

 must be older than those on the south. 



South of the indicated line of fault which probably had a very slight 

 downthrow here, the rocks, up to the foot of the hills, are much obscured 

 by alluvium. This is particularly unfortunate, as the neighbourhood of 



( 57 ) 



