210 Report of the Coal Committee. [No. 98. 



of this last unfortunate circumstance, Mr. Pontet stated that the 

 necessary aid did not reach him till the rains had set in, when the 

 place being unhealthy, he was obliged to leave the raising and dispatch 

 of the coal to inexperienced natives. 



The following is an extract from Mr. Pontet's letter, in which 

 he describes the operations in which he was engaged — " After the 

 first vein of coal, we came upon a hard black stone, and finding the 

 operation of boring through it so very tedious, 1 took upon myself 

 to select a spot for a shaft, and procured well-diggers, and stone-cutters, 

 who have been for the last two months at work, at present to all appear- 

 ance with satisfactory prospects, as one of the stone-cutters who opened 

 a shaft at Burdwan says this mine bears some resemblance to it. I am 

 induced to persevere a few feet more, in hopes of coming to a useful 

 vein. The first twenty-three feet of soil is red and black earth mixed 

 with kunkur, and under that, to a depth of forty feet, are thirteen 

 different strata, three of coal, and the rest various kinds of stone." 

 Mr. Pontet transmitted to the Committee specimens of all the differ- 

 ent beds passed through, which are remarkably characteristic of the 

 true coal measures ; and of eleven different beds passed through in the 

 last seventeen feet of the excavation, three were coal of good quality, but 

 too thin for working, and in the shale we observed excellent specimens 

 of Vertabrea Indica, one of the few abundant fossils of the Burdwan 

 beds that happens to have received a name. 



The excavation was formed on the N.W. side of the Bramenee 

 nulla ; but Mr. Pontet states that he traced the coal a mile S.W. of 

 the Bramenee river, from which he concludes that the Burdwan and 

 Rajmahal beds are connected. 



Soan River. 

 In a letter from Mr. Ravenshaw, Officiating Commissioner of Patna, 

 to the Government of Bengal dated 6th January last, that gentle- 

 man states that a Cazee had found a bed of coal at a place called 

 Chupree, four miles from the Soan, near its junction with the Koila, and 

 estimated the expense of delivering coal from this bed to Dinapore to 

 be five and a half annas per maund. On this information 300 rupees 

 were advanced to the Cazee to enable him to commence operations ; 

 but after extracting 100 maunds, precisely similar to Palamow coal, 

 the bed assumed a slaty character, and the Cazee abandoned his ope- 

 rations. If the Cazee's statement regarding the existence of coal so 

 near the Soan be correct, the circumstances under which it occurs 

 ought to be fully investigated. 



