2 
Records of the Geological Survey of India. 
[vol. VIII. 
tiling high up on the hill side, which arrested his attention, and dismounting from his horse, 
which, of course, could not climh up the rugged cliffs of these bare and snow-clad hill sides, 
he himself with great exertion struggled up, examined what he wished to see, and made his 
notes, and struggled down again to his companions. They noticed the great difficulty he 
found in again mounting, and came on to the camp slowly and carefully; the march next day 
was countermanded, in the hope that a little rest might enable our friend to recover himself, 
but falling into a semi-unconscious state, he only lingered on until the noon of the follow¬ 
ing day (19th June). His body was conveyed to Leh, where, with all possible honours, his 
remains were interred in the presence of his fellow travellers, the officers of the mission. 
Thus passed away at the early age of 36 one of the most devoted and able votaries of 
Natural Science whom India has ever seen. 
Gifted by nature with peculiar powers of observation and comparison, trained in an accu¬ 
rate and careful school of Geology and Palaeontology, he brought to his labours unbounded 
zeal, acute intelligence, and large and carefully acquired knowledge, all of which tended to 
render him one of the most useful and most trusted of our colleagues. But in addition to this, 
his genial temperament, his sound judgment, and his hearty appreciation of work of any 
kind in others, together with his clear views of justice, and the unflinching expression of 
those views, made him also one of our most esteemed and beloved friends and advisers. His 
loss to the Geological Survey will be long and keenly felt. He has left behind him a 
noble monument of his research and powers in the Paloeontologia Indica, published by the 
Geological Survey of India, in which, just before his departure for Yarkand, he had com¬ 
pleted the description of the Cretaceous Fauna of Southern India in four large volumes 4to., 
with 203 plates. And fortunately for the Survey, he has also left behind him a very fitting 
and competent successor in Dr. Waagen, long his trusted fellow labourer and assistant. 
Dr. Waagen’s publications have already secured for him the high approval of all competent 
to judge of such careful and accurate research. 
Dr. Waagen himself was also absent on medical certificate during the year, and has 
only recently returned to take up the Paleontological labours on which he was so actively 
and earnestly engaged, when his health gave way. He has, I am happy to say, returned in 
good health. 
Mr. Medlicott’s time was so fully occupied by the current work of the survey, and by 
the pressing necessity for constant revision of the reports and researches of others, and un¬ 
ceasing communication and advice on all points referred to this office, that he found time for 
only two brief visits to the field. At the urgent request of the Government of Bengal, he 
undertook to visit the localities where coal was reported to occur within the Garo Hills. 
Until very recently, it was not possible to proceed into these hills with safety. And when 
formerly Mr. Medlicott visited the southern fringe of the hills (Memoirs, Geological Survey, 
India, YII, 151), and described the local exhibition of some poor coal-seams along their 
outskirts, no repetition of these rocks was known to occur within the range. But on now 
getting access to them, several detached basins of newer secondary rocks have been found in 
the heart of the hills, north of the main ridge. In one of these a strong seam of fair coal 
is pretty generally distributed. An account of this discovery was given in the May part of 
the Records of the Survey, 1874, p. 58, and it is therefore unnecessary to refer to it more 
in detail here. A short run into the northern portion of the Rajmehal Hills resulted chiefly 
in the discovery that no alluvial deposits occurred on the top of Putturghatta Hill north of 
Colgong, where they had been reported to occur, at a level which made it difficult to account 
for their existence, excepting on the supposition that the ‘ old alluvium’ of Bengal had a 
marine origin. 
