IN SOUTHERN INDIA. 



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substance was met with." Mr. Vanstavern also examined 

 some 58 square miles of country of the supposed coal-field, 

 and, like the Geological Surveyors, completely failed in 

 finding any fossils. He concludes by remarking, "In no place 

 have I met with coal-bearing rocks nor outcrops of coal or 

 any combustible matter, and by the nature of rocks there 

 certainly cannot be any coal.' , 



Another amateur geologist, well known a few years since 

 in Madras, took it upon himself publicly to blame the 

 members of the Geological Survey because they did not 

 recommend Government to make trial borings for coal at 

 places along the North- West Line of the Madras Railway. 

 The indications of coal, on the strength of which he himself 

 went up to Government to recommend such borings were, 

 firstly, fragments of coal lying on the surface of massive 

 granitoid gneiss a few yards off the road from Gooty to 

 Adoni, up which a large quantity of identical (English) coal 

 had been carted a short time before from a coal depot at 

 Gooty Station ; secondly, the presence of petroleum in caves 

 in the limestone cliffs at Khona Oopalpad 15 in Bellary District 

 which turned out to be bat and pigeon guano ; thirdly, a 

 report by some wandering miner of traces of carbonaceous 

 matter in a limestone quarry five miles north of North- 

 west Ouddapah town. On examination no traces of carbon- 

 aceous matter of any sort could be found, nor had any been 

 noticed" by Mr. Higginson, the Madras Irrigation Company's 

 Engineer, who had for weeks before been quarrying there on 

 a large scale. On the precious evidence of such indications 



15 The Khona Oopalpad valley is well worth visiting, for the limestone 

 cliffs containing the guano caves are splendid specimens of recent travertine 

 formed by streams rising to the north. There are two great travertine cliffs, 

 the further of which is really and positively a fossil waterfall and on a 

 very large scale. They contain beautifully preserved impressions of leases of 

 existing trees also the shells of living species of helix, &c. 



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