i838.] Reports on the Coal and Mineral Resources of India. 163 



the structure of this rock, the fragment of a fruit or lomentum 

 of a leguminous plant belonging- to the tribe mimosea, was found.* 

 This fossil, like the remains of the teredinous animals al- 

 ready noticed, (though its form is better preserved) is converted 

 into sandvstone in no way different from the matrix, except that 

 it was separated from it by a want of cohesion between the form and 

 the impression. It is probable from this condition of the fossil that 

 it may have lived at a time when the rock in which it was imbed- 

 ded was forming, and been washed into waters and deposited with 

 their sediment. Near it was found a thorny stem, such as the plant to 

 which the fruit belonged most probably possessed, especially as the 

 thorny species of mimosese producing fruit of such a size, are the most 

 numerous of the tribe. The mimosese form a very general feature of 

 the vegetation of the plains, but are rarely if ever seen on mountain 

 summits at such an elevation as the rock in which these fragments were 

 found. The inference consequently tends to support the indications 

 of upheavement afforded by the marine remains so extensively distri- 

 buted over the acclivities of these mountains, as well as the doctrine of 

 Lyeil as to the influence of vicissitudes in physical geography, on the 

 distribution and existence of species. It also leads us to infer, that one 

 feature at least of the exisiing vegetation of India, has survived those 

 revolutions which have obliterated the existence of tropical forms in 

 the present temperate regions of the earth. 



" Reposing^ on the teredinite sandstone near Cherra, a detached ac- 

 cumulation of limestone with alternating beds of sandstone, coal, and 

 shale, disposed in horizontal strata form a precipice about a hundred 

 feet high from the base. Coal, to a thickness of fifteen feet in places 

 occupies a middle position in these strata. A bed of loose, coarse and 

 sharp sand, five feet deep, forms the roof of the coal, and a layer of 

 soft sandstone, about two feet in thickness, rests directly under the soil 

 upon a bed of clay about twenty feet deep. The clay holds an inter- 

 mediate position between the roof of the coal and the superincumbent 

 sandstone, it is of yellow colour, but dark in some places, and intersect- 

 ed horizontally with thin layers of gravel, coal, and an iron pyrites of 

 little value, and in small quantity. From their softness these beds 

 are easily, though not uniformly, acted upon by surface water, which 

 peculiarity may have given rise to that waved appearance observed 

 by Mr. Jones and Captain Sage in the Burdwan and Palamow coa] 

 fields. 



*' * We are indebted to the botanical acquirements of my friend and fellow traveller 

 William Griffith, Esq. for a right knowledge of the nature of this fossil" 



