232 Murchisoris Silurian System. 



uppermost beds in nearly all coal fields where the newer 

 series of the formation is complete ; and as the description 

 above quoted applies precisely to several samples both of 

 Cuttack and Palamaw coals, sent to Calcutta for trial, we 

 may conclude that the samples in question are but the 

 surface or batty coals of those districts, which from their 

 woody appearance have hitherto in India been erroneously 

 named lignite. This fact not only establishes a very wonder- 

 ful identity between Indian and English coal fields, but casts 

 a new and important light on the value of the former, 

 which under the supposition that the mineral they contain 

 was a lignite rather than a true coal were neglected, or 

 their value left in doubt and uncertainty. 



We shall conclude the practical details in our present 

 notice, by the following remarks of Mr. Murchison on the 

 Brown Clee coal field, where operations have been carried 

 on under circumstances similar to those which would pro- 

 bably be found to prevail in some of the Indian coal fields. 



Coal has been wrought on these hills from time immemorial, and 

 numerous old shafts attest the extent of these operations, by which 

 indeed nearly all the best coal has been extracted. As the ground, 

 however, has never been regularly allotted, each speculator having 

 begun his work where he pleased, and abandoned it when he encoun- 

 tered a difficulty, it is impossible to say how much of the mineral has 

 been wasted, and what quantity may remain beneath in unconnected 

 and broken masses. On the sides of the Abdon Barf most of the pre- 

 sent shafts are shallow, but in former times it appears that a pit was 

 sunk to a depth of seventy yards, first, through a considerable thick- 

 ness of disintegrating basalt, and afterwards through the batty coal to 

 the ironstone measures. 



The deepest shafts in the Clee Barf are eighty yards, the shallowest 

 fourteen to fifteen, and between these two extremes, there are pits of 

 intermediate depths. They are all worked by the common windlass, a 

 single man sometimes raising coal from a sixty yard shaft, aided by the 

 counterpoise of only an oaken block or "Jack." Owing to their lofty 

 position these coal works are almost entirely free from water, which, 

 except where it lodges in the decomposed basalt, termed "gravel," 

 percolates as rapidly as it falls through the numerous cracks by which 



