1865.] Tlie Geological Survey of India. 339 



the year 1863, a tract of country stretching across the peninsula from 

 the Gulf of Cambay to the mouth of the Ganges has been completed. 

 This was an object steadily kept in view during several years, and 

 as the relations of the rocks along this belt have been determined, a 

 basis has thus been formed for the extension of the work towards the 

 north and south. Another belt, farther south, in the parallel of 

 Kurnool, Bellary, and Goa, is now in course of examination, and will 

 form a portion of the work of several years to come. In the mean- 

 time, the rocks along the southern flanks of the Himalaya are being 

 mapped, forming a third belt to the northward, so that we presume 

 the intention is to extend the work in a series of parallels over the 

 intervening districts until they form a" junction. 



For a region of such vast extent as India, and of the relationship 

 of whose rocks we have so imperfect a knowledge, the above plan 

 may be — and doubtless is — the best. In a country, however, such as 

 England, in which the formations are arranged in so symmetrical a 

 manner, that we can make a traverse from the oldest to the newest 

 formations along a given straight line, the obvious course is to 

 commence with the former, and work up to the latter ; and this is the 

 general plan which has been adopted by the English surveyors. But 

 in India it is otherwise, and although the Himalayas offer an apparent 

 base, yet such are their dimensions, both lengthways and vertically, 

 such the physical difficulties likely to be offered in any attempt to 

 unravel their structure, that at least one generation would have passed 

 away ere such a Herculean task could have been accomplished. We 

 therefore assume that the apparently unsystematic plan of operations 

 which is represented on the Index Map accompanying Dr. Oldham's 

 Report (which also shows certain favoured spots of which surveys 

 have been made, scattered at wide intervals over the Indian Empire), 

 has been adopted, in obedience to economical, scientific, or perhaps 

 Imperial requirements. Some of these are indeed apparent from the 

 Reports of the surveyors themselves, as we find their regular work 

 frequently interrupted by orders from Government to proceed to some 

 spot, mayhap many hundred miles distant, to report on some special 

 district. Thus we find that Mr. W. T. Blanford, during the year 

 1863, was detached on temporary duty to examine a reported coal- 

 field in Sinde ; and Dr. Oldham himself, while engaged in company 

 with Mr. Medlicott in examining a very important area, extending 

 from Monghyr to the Sone, was ordered to proceed at once to the 

 Punjab, to examine and report upon the deposits of so-called coal 

 in the Salt range. Such interruption must sadly interfere with the 

 steady progress of the Survey; and now that most of the real or 

 imaginary coal-bearing districts have been visited by the officers of 

 the Survey, it is to be hoped that their systematic labours will be less 

 frequently interfered with. 



The districts treated of in the two memoirs before us lie almost 

 at the two extremities of the Peninsula. That described by Mr. 

 Medlicott embraces an area of 7,000 square miles, in a region pecu- 

 liarly attractive from its physical features, being composed of those 

 picturesque ranges which form the frontiers of the Himalayas in the 



