1874.] PresicUnfs Address. 63 



to which our coal measures belong. Some light may thus be shed upon the 

 obscure homotaxy of these interesting formations. Secondly, the late 

 discovery of a seam of Anthracite Coal by Mr. Mallet of the Geological 

 Survey which has . an amount of unusual interest ; first because it is 

 the result of a search undertaken on theoretical grounds, and secondly 

 because it promises to throw some additional light on the geological struc- 

 ture of the Himalayas. In 1849 Dr. Hooker found in a little stream leading 

 from the Pankabarry Bungalow, some specimens of Vertibraria and Trizygia 

 which are well known fossils of the Damudah coal-fields. At this place the 

 stream cuts its way through beds of sandstone which in some places contain 

 bands of lignite and belong to the Sub-Himalayan Tertiary Rocks. Dr. 

 Hooker appears to have inferred that these beds were older than those yield- 

 ing the fossils, since they appeared to dip under them. Dr. Hooker's error 

 was corrected in 1856 by Mr. W. T. Blanford who found that at the very 

 head of the little stream in question, the Tertiary sandstones rested against 

 a graphitic band from which the Damudah plants had clearly been derived, 

 and which is quite independent of the Tertiary rocks and very much more 

 ancient. This investigation being made in the height of the rains, and the 

 locality being an unhealthy Terai, the bed could not be then traced up, and 

 it was not until the present season, that Mr. Mallet was sent to follow up 

 the discovery. 



You know what great attention the Coal question is now demanding 

 in England, in instance of its importance I may mention that one of the 

 greatest authorities on the subject, Dr. Siemens, stated in a lecture delivered 

 at Newcastle on behalf of the British Association, in September last, " that 

 from the simple rise in price of 8 shillings per ton during the year 1872, the 

 British consumer of coal had to pay £44,000,000 more than the market 

 value of former years for the supply of his coal ; the consumption in Great 

 Britain was 110,000,000 tons per annum." 



He estimates the consumption of fuel is so wasteful, that if it was used 

 in a careful and scientific manner, the consumption could be reduced by half, 

 and he further estimates that in the production of iron and steel and in 

 steam power, the aid that science gives towards improvement and econo- 

 my effects already an actual annual saving in expenditure of full 4 per 

 cent, additional every year. 



The question of mineral fuel equally demands our attention in this 

 country. Hitherto Indian coal has not been used either for metallurgical 

 purposes or to any extent for ocean-going steamers, so that there has been 

 a considerable importation of English coal and coke. 



For the removal of difficulties in the former case, I have taken the first 

 step by the introduction of Siemen's Gas Furnaces in which coal from the 

 Eaneegunge field, is now used for metallurgical purposes, and for which 

 English fuel was formerly imported. 



