1838.] Reports on the Coal and Mineral Resources of India, 160 



elay composed of argillaceous blue claj' with slaty layers of ferruginous 

 matter and sandstone. The compact beds abound in nummulites, and 

 in fragments of the same rock which had been quarried somewhere in 

 this vicinity and conveyed to Chattak for the purpose of making lime, 

 a Turbinolopsis ocracea was found.* Now although we cannot as yet 

 contend for the universal and contemporaneous distribution either of 

 the same organic species or geological formations, yet as the chalk of 

 Europe is represented in several extensive tracts of that continent by 

 rocks which are very unlike, and especially in the Morea, by a compact 

 nummulite limestone, and in the South of France by an oolite contain- 

 ing nummulites, there is no reason why, in the present state of our 

 knowledge we should not refer our compact nummulite limestone, 

 together with the oolite associated with it, to the cretaceous group. 

 See Lyell, 4 ed. Vol. 4, 287-8, where the observations of MM. Bob- 

 laye and Virlet, are referred to in support of the equivalent distribution 

 of chalk and nummulite limestone in Europe. 



" In the Cherra Ponji coal no vegetable impressions have been found, 

 but slight opportunities have been hitherto alforded of examining the 

 adjoining shales in which they are chiefly to be expected. I found irA 

 the bed of coal at Serrareem, however, which appears to be the same 

 formation, a large Phytolithus, or stem characteristic also of several of 

 the independent coal formations of Europe and America ; a similar 

 fossil appears to have been also found by Yoysey, in the coal of Cen- 

 tral India ;t thus, the identity of the different beds referred to, is so far 

 confirmed. 



" With the exception just mentioned, as well as the impressions of 

 Lycopodiums and Ferns in the shales connected with Burdwan Coal, 

 organic remains have been hitherto little noticed in Indian Coals ; 

 but when we avail ourselves of improved means of observation we find 

 this branch of the subject no less interesting here, than it had been 

 rendered in Europe. J 



" * A madreporite represented by a single star, the radii of which, as well as the form of 

 the fossil, correspond with T. ocracea, represented in the Sppl. vol. Griff. Anim. King." 

 "+ Resear.Phys. Class. Asiat. Soc. 1892.— 13." 



• • i A gentleman recently engaged in a survey of one of our coal fields exhibited a large 

 yeed which seemed to be an ordinary species of sac charum, at one of the lat-^ scientific 

 Soirees at Government House, as the plant from which coal is derived. It is however 

 stated on the authority of Lindley and Hutton, in their Fossil Flora, that no glumaceous 

 plant has been found in a fossil state, though grasses now form a general feature of the 

 vegetation of all countries. Of 260 species of plants discovered in coal formations, 220 

 are cryptogamous, the remainder afford no instance of any reed, notwithstanding some 

 doubtful appearances to tte contrary, and not a single vegetable impression in the coa' 

 Ijedshas been identified with any plant now growing on the earth," 



