^2 Geology of the Kdsya Mountains, [Jan. 



middle position in these strata. A bed of loose, coarse and sharp sand, 

 five feet deep, forms the roof of the coal, and a layer of soft sandstone, 

 about two feet in thickness, rests directly under the soil upon a bed of 

 clay about twenty feet deep. The clay holds an intermediate position 

 between the roof of the coal and the superincumbent sandstone ; it is 

 of yellow color, but dark in some places, and intersected horizontally 

 with thin layers of gravel, coal, and an iron pyrites of little value, and 

 in small quantity. From their softness these beds are easily, though 

 not uniformly, acted upon by surface water, which peculiarity may have 

 given rise to that waved appearance observed by Mr. Jones and Captain 

 Sage in the Burdwan and Palamow coal fields. 



Following the section from the coal downwards, we meet with an 

 earthy limestone, which, though naturally dark, becomes mealy and 

 whitish on the surface by exposure : it is perhaps the magnesian lime- 

 stone of the coal measures. This bed is about four feet in thickness, 

 and contains nests of coal, with some traces of shells ; a layer of sand- 

 stone an inch in thickness divides this from a bed of ordinary compact 

 limestone twenty feet in thickness, containing few if any shells ; — an 

 interesting circumstance when compared with the fact of the absence of 

 fossils in limestones of similar character in Central India : a more com- 

 pact and crystalline bed than the last, abounding in those shells repre- 

 sented in plate 2, then occurs. This is separated from the great 

 sandstone, by a fine calcareous grit stone eight feet in thickness, in 

 which fig. 23, plate VIII. was the only fossil found. 



Nummulite limestone (k, fig. 1) was first brought to light at the 

 foot of the Kdsya mountains by Mr. Colebrooke in his paper on Mr. 

 Scott's notes and specimens, which were forwarded to the Geological So- 

 ciety in 1824* ; but the Chirr a Pu?ijihe& of shell limestone here noticed 

 was first observed in 1832 by Mr. Cracroft-j- , Mr. Scott may have 

 previously found occasional shells in the same rock in the Kdsya as 

 well as in the Garrow mountains J. It does not however appear that 

 any chronological distinction has been established between the different 

 limestones in this quarter, although the Chirr a rock is distinguished as 

 a formation from the nummulite limestone, as well by means of its fossils, 

 as by the beds with which it is associated. 



The nummulite limestone of Terriaghdt, where it composes that por- 

 tion of the Laour hills situated at the base of the Kdsya mountains, is a 



* Geological Transactions, vol. I. 2nd series, 132. 

 t Journal of the Asiatic Society, vol. I. 252. 

 X Geological Transactions, vol. I 2nd series, 132. 



