GLEANINGS 
IN 
SCIENCE. 
No. 10 October , 1829. 
I . — Some Particulars regarding the Mineral Productions of Bengal. 
By the late Mr. Jones of Calcutta. 
The RAjmald hills are not stratified, but appear to be primitive mountains, com- 
posed of black whinstone*, in large masses. Their ascent is difficult, but table land 
and good spring water is found on their summits. The inhabitants are of an indus- 
trious and inoffensive disposition. The hills at the foot of the mountains produce 
flint, nodular iron ore anil beautiful agates of various descriptions, quartz crystal- 
lisations, and hard boulder-stones fit for paving. 
A person by digging in the low hills nearUdinallah, may be convinced that stones 
grow out of common earth and sand : he would there find them in every stage of 
formation. 
The agent which hardens them appears to be ferruginous water, which gathers 
and concretes the earth in laminae to a form like an egg : the ferruginous matter, is 
at first of a blackish purple colour, soft and soapy, and appears distinct about a line 
thick between the lamina; of clay, which are about three lines or more in thickness. 
In this state it may be broken with the fingers, but as the stone advances in growth, 
the cementing matter disappears and mixes with the mass ; which becomes a close 
grained blueish boulder.stone, not easily to be broken by a heavy hammer. I 
dwell upon this circumstance from a conviction that soft stone may be hardened, 
by iron liquor-p slowly dropping upon it, until it becomes durable, and may be of 
great use in the arts. 
These hills produce wax, honey, and stick lac ; hut in small quantities. A few 
elephants, but not enough to make it worth while to catch them. No large valuable 
timber, but charcoal may be procured at the river side at twenty-five rupees per 
hundred maunds. 
About Sicri-gali and Painti, very large iron mines have been worked, in former 
times ; the ore is nodular, and would perhaps, by carefully rejecting the heads or 
unproductive stones, yield from twenty to twenty-five per cent. iron. 
In this neighbourhood every chink and fissure within the rocks and earth is filled 
with a semicalcareous substance called cancar, of which the natives and others make 
an impure lime. It appears to be formed by water, carrying in solution with it, 
calcareous, ferruginous, and siliceous matter, which concretes in every space where 
it rests ; in the concrete mass, the compound parts seem separate like granite. This 
substance shews that either there is a great quantity of limestone in the neighbour- 
hood, or formerly has been there, and is now decomposed and carried off; however, 
I could find no proper limestone near that place. 
In the environs of Pat.har-g.lniti, great variety of iron ore is to be found, and 
of a richer quality than that found at Sicri-gali, and large mines of it are now open , 
some of them with an area of sixty feet between the pillars. This place also affords 
potter’s clay anil other refructory clay, which would answer extremely well for the 
purpose of lining furnaces, and I am of opinion it would be a proper place for erect- 
* Probably gneiss or hornblende schist. The proper whinstone is, I believe, a 
greenstone or basalt — E d. 
t Possibly solution of carbonate of iron is meant. — E d. 
