206 
Records of the Geological Survey of India. 
[voL. XI. 
subject to fiery eruptions, similar to those of Kamri, the oil is in pai’t 
of the same pale transparent kind, and is accompanied by immense quantities of 
gas. Abich found the temperature of the soil there to be 69° F., of the 
naphtha 62-6° to 66°, and of the gas-springs 68-5°, and Bischof considered that 
“ the low temperatures above given of the exhalations of Abscheron, where 
volcanic action in the depths might be conjectured, exclude the notion that heat 
has any share in their formation.^ ” Bichwald, however, arrived at a different 
conclusion. “Near to Baku,” he wrote, “about one-fourth werst from the 
perpetual fire, a heat rises out of a fissure of the shell-limestone, which is so 
strong that the hand can scarcely bear it: hence, from all these circumstances, 
we can scarcely doubt of the existence of a subterranean heating process in 
the peninsula of Abscheron.”^ Sir R. Murchison, also, has expressed the opinion 
that the mud volcanoes of the Caucasus “ have a deep seat, and are as directly 
connected with internal igneous agency as any other geological phenomena of 
eruption.^ ” 
The evidence is clear as to the intimate connection of the Ramri salses with 
Connection between paroxys- seismic phenomena at least. Out of the few eruptions 
mal eruptions aud earthquakes. of which accounts have been printed, three certainly, 
and probably four, were synchronous with earthquakes. During the prin¬ 
cipal shock of the violent earthquake on the 26th August 1833, it is stated 
by Dr. McClelland that flames issued to a height of several hundred feet from 
one of the Kyouk Phyu salses. A similar occun-ence took place during the 
earthquake of the 23rd March 1839. The submarine outburst near False Island 
of the 26th July 1843 was immediately preceded by a like disturbance. Further, 
during the great earthquake of 2nd April 1762, two volcanoes are said to have 
opened in the Chittagong District. If these really were volcanoes, and there seems 
no reason to question it, they were doubtless of the same class as those in 
Ramri. The connection in some cases may lie in the shock sufficiently loosening 
the superincumbent rock to allow the pent-up gas to force a passage: in others, 
it may pei’haps be due to a diminution in the size of the fissure, either moment¬ 
arily during the passage of the wave, or permanently from a partial falling in 
of the sides. In either case a sufficiently increased tension of gas might be 
produced to bring on an eruption. It is noticeable that during the earthquake 
in the last century, when the islands were elevated several feet, no eruptions 
are recorded, and it is specially mentioned that none took place in Cheduba. In 
the Chittagong District, during what was probably the same earthquake, the 
ground was dejiressed, and two new volcanoes are said to have broken forth. 
Besides the mud volcanoes in the various localities along the flanks of the 
Arrakan Range, mentioned at page 193, the only 
Mud volcanoes elsewhere in i 
India. piienomerion ot the kmd in Lastern India that I am 
aware of occurs in Upper Assam. It is thus described 
by Captain Hannay :—At Namtchuk Pathar, near the mouth of the river, the 
petroleum exudes from the banks, and a bed of very fine coking coal runs across 
the bed of the Namtchuk. The hills here are also intersected by ravines, and in 
' Chemical Geology, I, 252, 257. 2 Edin. New Phil, Journal, XIV, 132. 
^ Russia and tlie Ural M<mntains, p. 57(3. 
