SOHAGPtJR COAL-FIELD. 



43 



area as 1,600 square miles, outcrops were very sparingly met with, 

 and when this fact was understood, it became an obligation to explore 

 every stream, great and small, much more closely than was at first 

 contemplated. 



In the comparatively level expanse of the Sohagpur district, this 

 obligation was almost too scrupulously discharged. But in the hilly 

 tracts and uplands of Korea and Jhilmili, the tax on our time was too 

 great, the streamlets and the runlets being overwhelming in number ; 

 and many of them, in which doubtless there are exposures, have conse- 

 quently been unheeded. 



Entering the Sohagpur field from the west, through the picturesque 

 Murcha pass on the road between Pali and the town of Sohagpur, several 

 miles of sandstones have to be traversed, both with and across their 

 strike, before anything like a workable seam of coal is met with. 



Following the proposed line of railway as marked on our map, there 



are only a few thin outcrops of carbonaceous mat- 

 Thin coal outcrops at 



Maluoi, Semriha, Kauua- ter near Mahroi, Semriha, Kaunabahara, and So- 



bahara, aud Sohagpur. . , , . . , , . 



hagpur, which seem to me utterly devoid of pro- 

 mise of anything better below the surface. 



The thickest of these is 2 feet, and it occurs in the Kaunabahara 

 stream, a short distance above its junction with the one coming from 

 Semriha. It is much weathered at the surface. Northward from this 

 outcrop, the sandstones are thickly bedded porous rocks with decomposed 

 and undecomposed felspar, the former of which is of an unusually reddish 

 colour. 



Specimens of the fossil Trizygia speciosa together with Glossopferis 

 communis, Glossopteris formosa, and Vertebraria inilica, were found in 

 some variegated micaceous shales, and greenish close-grained micaceous 

 argillaceous sandstone, associated with the coal band exposed in the 

 Murna river where it flows past Sohagpiir. 



This is one of the few localities in which Trizygia was met with. As 

 bearing on the unification of the Damuda series, this equisetaceous plant 

 is a very interesting one. In former years it was supposed to be a 



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