﻿604 MR. L. Y. DALTON ON THE [NoV. I908, 



31. Notes on the Geology of Burma. By Leonard V. Dalton, 

 B.Sc. (Communicated hy Dr. A. Smith Woodward, F.R.S., 

 F.L.S., Y.P.G.S. Read April 15th, 1908.) 



[Plates LIV-LYII— Possils.] 



It is the object of this paper to present the results of geological 

 expeditions in the Irawadi valley carried out by my uncle Mr. W. 

 H, Dalton, P.G.S., and myself in the season of 1904-1905, and by 

 myself alone in 1905-1906, and to correlate these observations with 

 those made by previous writers, thus summarizing our present 

 knowledge of the geology of Burma generally and of the Tertiary 

 System of that country in particular. To this end it is divided into 

 the following sections : — 



Page 



I. Historical 604 



II. Original Observations 607 



III. General and Stratigraphical 617 



IV. Palaeontology 622 



V. Recapitulation 641 



I. Historical.' 



Dr. Fritz IS'oetling in 1895^ reviewed the work done on the geology 

 of Burma before that date, pointing out the remarkably-accurate 

 hypothetical arrangement ot the rocks of Burma made by Buckland 

 in 1828,^ and the absence of subdivision of the Tertiary System 

 previous to W. Theobald's paper on Lower Burma in 1873.^ In this 

 summary the ' Axial Group ' of Theobald is referred to as certainly 

 not of Triassic age — a statement controverted by later examination 

 of the fossils of the Arakan Yoma and other parts of Lower Burma — 

 although found true in the sense that the group is a complex one 

 (as we now know), and neither Triassic nor Cretaceous alone, but 

 assignable to both of these. While Dr. Noetling's paper thus 

 reviews the greater number of the works published on the geology 

 of Burma, and in particular those relating to the Tertiary of the 

 better-known regions of the Irawadi basin, there are certain other 

 papers to which it is necessary to refer here, as they deal with 

 the outlying districts. Of these the earliest is that of E. J. Jones 

 on the coals of the Chindwin Valley/ wherein he describes the 



1 Rec. Geol. Surv. India, vol. xxviii, p. 59, 



2 Trans. Geol. Soc. ser. 2, vol. ii, pt. iii, p. 377. The fossils collected by 

 J. Crawfurd near Singu and Yenangyat on the Irawadi, referred to by 

 Buckland, are in the Museum of the Geological Society, and apparently include 

 several of the forms named many years later by Dr. Noetling. They are of 

 especial interest, as being the first fossils from Burma to reach this country. 



3 'On the Geology of Pegu' Mem. Geol. Surv. India, vol. x, p. 189. 



* ' Notes on Upper Burma ' Rec. Geol. Surv. India, vol. xx (1887) p. 170. 



