476 



Boring Operations in Fort William, 



[April 



distant points of the series is sufficient to establish the conclusion 

 that their existence has been coeval with the whole deposit ; w hile the 

 sharp unworn angles of the fort bone prove that the animal to which 

 it belonged had lived and died in the immediate neighbourhood. 



Colonel MacLeod's fossil bone, may be designated without hesitation 

 one of the most precious rarities ever deposited in the Museum of the 

 Asiatic Society. 



June 1837.—" The chief engineer has the satisfaction of stating 

 that at length a stratum of clay has been reached, at a depth of 380 

 feet, and that the auger having penetrated 1 8 inches further has 

 brought up blue clay mixed with a large quantity of apparently 

 decayed wood ; the tubes have only gone down 377 feet, but it is 

 hoped that they may be forced down through the remainder of the bed 

 of sand to the clay to-morrow, when by a cessation of the influx of 

 sand the operation will proceed with much more rapidity.'* 



The appearance of ihe clay is precisely that of the black peat-clay 

 found at the depth of 14 to 20 feet below ihe surface, and it must be 

 the debris of a similar Snndarhan tract formed anterior to the deposit 

 of the 380 feet of superincumbent sand and clays. The wood is 

 highly charred, but by no means converted into coal. 



August 1837.— Colonel MacLeod, chief engineer forw^arded several 

 fragments of coal brought up by the borer in the fort from a depth of 

 392 feet. The depth attained now being 404 feet. 



The coal has a specific gravity l.*0 and is of a fine quality, nearly 

 resembling the Assam specimens ; it is in rolled lumps evidently such 

 as are found in the beds of torrents, and such as have invariably led 

 to the discovery of seams in the vicinity. This will account for no 

 actual beds having been penetrated by the auger : the discovery is 

 very curious, as connected with the subject of Indian coal beds. 



November 1837. — The tubes had reached a depth of 450 feet, and 

 had met with some impediment to their further descent ; though the 

 sand continued to enter below. A rolled fragment of vesicular basalt 

 had been brought up from this depth. 



February 1838. — Two fresh fragments of fossil testudo from the 

 fort boring were presented by Colonel MacLeod, brought up from a 

 a depth of 450 feet. 



