1868.] KINGSMILL GEOLOGY OF CHINA. 133 



considerable quantities, being dependent on that province for their 

 supplies, owing to the jealous conduct of the government. Coal 

 which at the pit's mouth costs from 70 to 100 copper cash i^ei jpicul 

 (say 6s. to 7s. per ton) is sold at I^anking at 750 cash per jpicul, or 

 over 50s. per ton; the difference in price is partly owing to the 

 length of carriage, some 600 miles, but principally to the heavy 

 exactions levied by the local mandarins. 



The northern coal-fields of China are so important, cover such a 

 vast area, and, as yet, have been so imperfectly explored that any 

 more than an allusion to them on my part would be presumptuous. 

 Suffice it, therefore, to say that enormous deposits are known to 

 occur in Shantung, Chihli, Shansi, Shensi, and Kansu in China 

 proper, as well as beyond the frontiers in Mongolia, Manchuria, and 

 Shingking, where the coal-beds come down to the sea-coast. 



Above the upper coal-fields in China there seems to occur a break, 

 the next series in ascending order with which I am acquainted lying 

 unconformably over them, generally dipping at small angles and 

 seldom rising to any height over the plains. In the Nanking dis- 

 trict it commences with a series of conglomerates, and passes up into 

 a light red sandstone, not unlike the New Red of many parts of 

 England. These finally give place to thick beds of coarse gravel 

 and sand, the gravel generally composed of pebbles from the hardest 

 portions of the siliceous grits of the Tungting series. At Nanking 

 this series is well shown in the Yuhwatai and Tsingliang hills, the 

 latter displaying the lowest beds, the other the summit. Prom 

 Nanking the beds extend for considerable distances to the south 

 and west, reappearing at various spots in Kiangsu, Anhwei, 

 Kiangsi, and Hupeh. At Tatung on the Yangtse, at the foot of the 

 Wild-Boar Hills, they come down to the river, forming a series of 

 bold bluffs. At Hwangchow, in Hupeh, the upper gravels are ex- 

 posed likewise in a bold escarpment, running almost under the walls 

 of the city ; near Hwangshihkang, again, they appear in a manner 

 identical with that of their occurrence at Nanking, associated with 

 dark lenticular argillaceous nodules and a few vegetable stems, which 

 seem characteristic of the formation in the province of Hupeh, where 

 it has a very consideraljle lateral extension. With the exception of 

 these few imperfect stems, I have met with no fossils in the forma- 

 tion, which may be of late Secondary, or even of Tertiary date, 

 passing, as it appears to do, into the succeeding clays. In Kwang- 

 tung, again, in the delta of the Canton river, red sandstones reappear, 

 forming low hills in the valleys of the older mountain-ranges ; they 

 are conspicuous in Tiger Island, above the Bogue, at the Second-Bar 

 Pagoda, at Tamchow, where they are extensively quarried, and in 

 most of the low hills in the neighbourhood of Canton and Whampoa. 

 They are harder and darker in colour than those at Nanking, but 

 appear to occupy a similar position ; like them, too, they are, so far 

 as is known, unfossiliferous ; nor do they appear to contain any 

 mineral of economic importance. 



These sandstones are succeeded by considerable deposits of clay, 

 which play an important part in the geology of central China. 



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