GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF INDIA. 255 



state of the country frustrated any effort on his part to test the 

 rocks. Gold is also found and worked in some fashion in the 

 Hazarah country and in various streams of Northern Afghanistan. 



Among other minerals found in Southern Afghanistan may be 

 mentioned copper, which is worked in the Shah Maksud range, lead 

 and antimony ores, argentiferous galena, and native silver, sulphur, 

 petroleum (east of Sibi, since examined and reported on), coal, and 

 gypsum. JFrom olden times Kandahar has been celebrated as a 

 market where precious stones were sold to the merchants coming 

 from Shikarpur, but apparently only varieties of chrysolite and 

 chrysotile with some cornelian are actually found there, both being 

 derived from the amygdaloidal variety of the traps. 



Mr. Blanford was officially deputed by the' Government of India 

 to represent the Indian Geological Survey at the Congress held at 

 Bologna in 1881. This Congress had originated in a meeting of 

 geologists of various nations at Buffalo in 1876, who, in their turn, 

 arranged for an International Geological Congress at Paris in 1878, 

 for the purpose of deciding upon rules for the construction of 

 geological maps and for geological nomenclature and classification. 

 Out of this second meeting arose the Bologna Congress of 1881, to 

 which the questions at issue were referred, and which was attended 

 by about 200 members, of whom 130 were Italians and 70 foreigners. 

 On the whole, it cannot be said that much was done towards the 

 unification of nomenclature, or of the colouring and signs for 

 geological maps. It is an obvious drawback to congresses of this 

 character that they are not strictly representative, and that their 

 resolutions can have no binding force on absentees or dissentients. 

 But it is very profitable to gauge, however tentatively, the general 

 feeling of an important scientific body, and to those who have to 

 pass most of their lives in remote regions like India, it is of vast 

 importance to meet fellow-workers in similar fields and to exchange 

 ideas. 



One of the most important events in 1882 was the proving of the 

 new coal field of Umaria,* at the west end of the South Bewa 

 Gondwana basin. The actual area of exposed coal measures is 

 small (about five square miles) in an angle between the gneissic rocks 

 and the great spread of newer Gondwana sandstone to the north- 

 east. The outcrop of coal had been known for many years, but its 

 surface appearance was unpromising. An extensive field was thus 

 opened to enterprise, Umaria being the nearest possible source of 



* Noticed by Mr. Hughes in the " Records " for 1881 (Vol. XIV., Part 4). 



