250 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [No. 3. 



the cliffs close by, and it was not until I was on the eve of departure, that 

 I discovered the mistake. I send you specimens of this coal, and will 

 write you officially regarding it. It will depend on your report whether 

 I send up any large quantity to Calcutta for trial or not. The iron, I 

 send, is from Kunkerei, a village in Ungool, close to the very extensive 

 coal field of Gopalpersad. I have had sketches made by a friend of their 

 process, and also of the Gopalpersad coal cliffs, which I will send you by 

 and bye, the process is most primitive, but the iron bears a high cha- 

 racter, 18 seers of the impure iron as I send it you, are sold at the furnace 

 for one rupee ; when freed from impurities and well hammered it fetches 

 in the Cuttack bazar, a rupee for 8 seers. The axes and chisels made of it 

 in Cuttack are excellent, no flux whatsoever is used. The charcoal is made 

 from the Sal (Shorea robusta) I brought a large package of it with me ; 

 but my idiot of a bearer choose to think it was of no use and threw it 

 away or cooked his dinner with it. I send you a good deal of slag which 

 I picked up about the forge, I have plenty more if you require it. I had 

 no time to go to the gold regions in Paldeyra ; as it is I start again on the 

 16th for Bood, and shall not be under cover I fancy before May." 



The specimens and sketch alluded to, have also reached and are upon 

 the table, and I have examined the coal of which also a detailed report 

 is drawn up for the Journal : the iron ores I have not yet had time to 

 examine. 



From Lieut. W. D. Short, Executive Engineer, Midnapore, I received 

 a minute portion of gold dust and gold sands with a request that I 

 would examine them. The following is an extract of my letter to him 

 from which it will be seen that there exists in the gold sands of that dis- 

 trict something which would resemble a new mineral, but with such ex- 

 cessively minute specimens nothing very positive can be announced. 



" First your gold dust contained minute bits of copper, no doubt adul- 

 terations ? unless you saw them washed out before you in which case 

 they must be native copper ? 



" Then, in the gold dust and in the washed sand, I found some very 

 minute (pin's head) particles of a mineral which was yellow-white, malle- 

 able, and tough ; would not amalgamate with mercury ! and was exces- 

 sively difficult of solution in boiling Aqua regia ! ! though it certainly 

 contained gold ! ! ! What else I was unable to determine, but am inclin- 

 ed to think it may be a sulphuret of gold, a mineral not yet found to exist 

 though gold is found in iron pyrites (sulphuret of iron) where it is there- 

 fore supposed to exist as a sulphuret. 



" All this upon minute pin's-head bits (three of them I think) in watch- 

 glasses, and results watched by a magnifier ; so we can say nothing more 



