March, 1849. GEOLOGY. 403 



same clay conglomerate which I had seen at Lohar-ghur, 

 and thin seams of brown lignite, with a rhomboidal 

 cleavage. In the bed of the stream were carbonaceous 

 shales, with obscure impressions of fern leaves, of Trizygia, 

 and Vertebraria : both fossils characteristic of the Burdwan 

 coal-fields (see p. 8), but too imperfect to justify any 

 conclusion as to the relation between these formations.* 



Ascending the stream, these shales are seen in situ, 

 overlain by the metamorphic clay-slate of the mountains, and 

 dipping inwards (northwards) like them. This is at the foot 

 of the Punkabaree spur, and close to the bungalow, where 

 a stream and land-slip expose good sections. The carbo- 

 naceous beds dip north 60° and 70°, and run east and west ; 

 much quartz rock is intercalated with them, and soft white 

 and pink micaceous sandstones. The coal-seams are few 

 in number, six to twelve inches thick, very confused and 

 distorted, and full of elliptic nodules, or spheroids of quart zy 

 slate, covered with concentric scaly layers of coal : they 

 overlie the sandstones mentioned above. These scanty 

 notices of superposition being collected in a country clothed 

 with the densest tropical forest, where a geologist pursues his 

 fatiguing investigations under disadvantages that can hardly 

 be realized in England, will I fear long remain unconfirmed. 



* These traces of fossils are not sufficient to ideutify the formation with that of 

 the Sewalik hills of North-west India ; but its contents, together with its strike, dip, 

 and position relatively to the mountains, and its mineralogical character, incline 

 me to suppose it may be similar. Its appearance in such small quantities in 

 Sikkim (where it rises but a few hundred feet above the level of the sea, whereas 

 in Kumaon it reaches 4000 feet), may be attributed to the greater amount of 

 wearing which it must have undergone ; the plains from which it rises being 1000 

 feet lower than those of Kumaon, and the sea having consequently retired later, 

 exposing the Sikkim sandstone to the effects of denudation for a much longer 

 period. Hitherto no traces of this rock, or of any belonging to a similar geological 

 epoch, have been found in the valleys of Sikkim ; but when the narrowness of 

 these is considered, it will not appear strange that such may have been removed 

 from their surfaces : first, by the action of a tidal ocean ; and afterwards, by tha< 

 of tropical rains. 



