part 4 .] Ball: Raigarh and Hingir Coal-field. 113 
these upper rocks rest immediately on Talchirs, and along the northern boundary not unfre- 
quently upon gneiss. 
Although the junctions between those rocks and the Barakars often appear to be quite 
Unconformity. conformable, certain observations seem to indicate that some un¬ 
conformity between the two does exist. No actual section exhibiting 
unconformable superposition can be adduced, however. The nearest approach to it is perhaps 
the case above mentioned, where, close to Janjghir, a pebble conglomerate was traced off 
the gneiss on to Barakars upon which it appears to rest unconformably, but owing to some 
false bedding, the section is not quite clear, and should not, perhaps, be regarded as crucial. 
In the Pazar river section (page 111) there is the already noticed case of disturbed Barakars 
occurring close to the junction with the massive horizontal upper sandstones. 
Passing from these individual cases, which afford evidence of only doubtful value, to the 
more general relations existing between the upper sandstones and the Barakars, we find that, 
taken as a whole, the latter exhibit an amount of rolling and disturbance of which the upper 
beds show no trace whatever. 
The great amount of false bedding in the Barakars, noted both in this and the previous 
report, and the overlap, are quite sufficient to account for the fact that the beds of Barakars 
appearing from underneath the sandstones vary much in character in different parts of 
the field. At Lipuspali, for instance, there is a coal seam only a few feet below the red 
shales. Yet no sign of this coal seam appears in any other section. But when the facts 
observed in the tract of country indicated as the northern Raigarh area (p. 109) come to be 
examined, it is difficult to imagine any cause other than unconformity as being able to produce 
the relations which exist there. Denudation has in that part of the country cleared away 
the upper rocks and formed an extensive basin where upwards of 200 square miles of 
Barakars are exposed. Numerous more or less continuous sections of these rocks are afford¬ 
ed by the rivers which run from north to south; but the best is that in the Kurket. In that 
river from south to north there is a steadily descending section, which is sometimes compli¬ 
cated by local rolls, but which must represent several hundred feet in thickness. The 
crumpling and rolling and the dips,—the latter in places attaining as much as 10°—are 
incompatible with the idea that these beds are merely in their original position of deposit 
on a sloping surface. Several of the coal seams dip at angles of 5,° which, small though it 
be, can scarcely have existed at the time of deposit. From its very nature and generally 
accepted origin the coal must have been at first horizontal, or nearly so. 
In the surrounding rocks which form the ranges limiting the basin, and in three inlying 
hills or groups of hills known as Gid, Duldulli, and Kolam, no evidence of similar roiling 
and crumpling is apparent, while the sections, so far as they go, induce the belief that these 
outliers rest on the edges of different portions of the Barakar succession. From the inter¬ 
polation and false bedding, which, as has been alluded to, characterise these Barakar rocks, no 
actual conclusion could be drawn from observations on the difference in charactar of indi¬ 
vidual beds which are immediately covered by the upper sandstones. Indeed, the overlap 
alone would be sufficient to account for such differences as have been observed. It is there¬ 
fore necessary to confine the evidence for the unconformity to the more general characteristics 
of the two series, all small sections being, for the above given reasons, unreliable. 
Examined closely, the upper sandstones exhibit no signs of disturbance and appear to be 
quite horizontal. On some of the scarped ranges where the view takes in several miles, a slight 
soutliernly trend can, however, be made out, but no rolling corresponding to that in the 
Barakars at the base. Whether the rolling and crumpling in the thin beds is in any degree 
due to the pressure of the great mass of hills—which would in that case have been produced 
