54 APPENDIX. 



bearing formation to the diamond rock leaves tlie question as to 

 the origin of diamond in such a formation just where it was. 



Since the establishment of the Indian Survey, under its present 

 enlightened Superintendent, the Messrs. Blandford and Mr. 

 Theobald have explored large tracts of India, and have given their 

 opinion, in which Dr. Oldham concurs, that the Nagpur,Damoodah, 

 and Talcheer, as well as other Bengal coal-fields, cannot be 

 younger than Permian. (3£em. Ind. 8urv., i., 82.) These beds 

 in the Damoodah group hold many species identical with those 

 of our New South Wales coal districts, including the outlying 

 patches on the Cudgegong. 



The Indian surveyors show that the Mahadeva sandstone (or 

 Bangnapilly rock) surmoxmts the Damoodah beds, believed to be 

 Permian, and that the Talcheer group, which underlies them, 

 rest on gneiss, hornblendic gneiss, schist, and quartz schist ; and 

 in the Mahanuddi Eiver, to the southward of the Talcheer coal- 

 field, which runs throvigh the basic formations, a small amount of 

 diamonds has been found. Where the Talcheer beds meet the horn- 

 blendic rocks by a fault on the Takiria Eiver and the Ouli which 

 flows to it from the Mahadeva rocks, gold is occasionally found. 



North of this region the great Vindhyan rocks stretch across 

 the country north-north-easterly, being the upper of three 

 groups resting on gneiss and granite. These are described in 

 the second volume of the " Memoirs of the Survey," by Professor 

 H. B. Medlicott ; and both he and Dr. Oldham give good reasons 

 for placing the Vindhyan series in connection with the Damoodah, 

 or Coal measures of the Talcheer field, and therefore they are far 

 removed from the Bangnapilly beds, belonging to the Mahadeva 

 group to the southward. 



Mr. Medlicott shows that the diamond beds are not all of one 

 age, and instances the mines at Punnah, 600 or 700 miles north 

 of Cuddapah, which he places close to the junction of the lower 

 and middle groups of the Yindhyan series, at the northern edge 

 of the Eewah tableland, in the shales, to which latter group they 

 belong. This at once places them far below any possible Jurassic 

 or even Triassic strata. 



The Punnah diamond diggings occupy not more than twenty 

 acres. The diamonds are found in a conglomerate belonging to 

 relics of old spurs and outliers of the tableland. Pine grits 

 among red and green shales, and a few beds of sandstone, consti- 

 tute the strata. 



At Kumerea (another field) the diamond bed is in an incoherent 

 ferruginous sandy earth of variable thickness and undecided 

 position. To the east it is modified, and near Bridjepur it consists 

 of 2 feet of conglomeratic sandstone, resting on strong beds 

 of sandstone, and is worked at the surface. The " kukra," or 

 diamond bed, is sometimes an incoherent ferruginous and sandy 



