64 Records of the Geological Survey of India. [voL. v. 
If this be correct, the coal only occurs upon one horizon. It is by no means impossible, 
however, that other beds may be found. 
Coal is known to be exposed in three places. The most westwardly of these is at 
Patrapada in Ongiil, a village on the Medulia Jor, a tributary of the Ouli river. Here some 
six feet of carbonaceous shale and coal are seen in the bank of the stream, capped by clay, 
upon which rest the coarse grits of the Mahadeva group. The area occupied by the beds 
is small. 
The next place, which is far better known, is at Gopalprasad in Takhir, on the Tengria 
river. The rocks at this spot are nearly horizontal for a long distance, and the coal bed 
extends for some miles along the banks of the stream above the village. It also recurs 
lower down the stream. The thickness of the bed is considerable, but its quality inferior, 
tho greater portion being excessively shaloy and impure. Selected specimens contain upwards 
of 30 per cent, of ash. It by no means follows, however, that better coal may not be found, 
and even the inferior fuel would bo useful for many purposes if any local demand existed, and 
from the horizontality of tho bed a large quantity might be procured with very little labour. 
The general dip in the neighbourhood is to the north, and any attempts at working the coal 
on a large scale, or further exploration by boring, should be made north of the Tengria 
stream. 
Tho third locality is in a small nalla running into tho Bramini from the west just north 
of tho town of Takhir. Beds lower than the coal are seen in the bank of the Bramini at the 
Rajah’s residence; the carbonaceous shale with coal is exposed about 400 yards from the river 
in tho small watercourse ; only two or three feet are visible, the dip is north-west, and tlie 
coal is covered by micaceous, sandy and shaky beds. A boring north-west of this spot would 
test the bed fairly. 
There is another locality in which, if tho section can he trusted, beds just above the coal 
shales in position are exposed at the surface, and where, consequently, a boring might very 
possibly penetrate them. This is at tho village of Konkurapal in Ongiil.* It is by no 
means certain that tho Gopalprasad shales aro close to tho surface here, but tlie spot is the 
summit of an anticlinal, and some black shale seen in the stream resembles the uppermost 
portion of the rooks of Gopalprasad. 
It is highly probable that closer search will show other places where coal is exposed at 
the surface. 
The south-eastern part of the field consists of Takhir beds, in which boulders are only 
occasionally found towards the base. They are numerous near the village of Porongo. 
Above the silt bed containing the boulders, there is a fine sandstone frequently containing 
grains of undecomposed felspar. There is no chance of coal being found in this portion of the 
basin, that is, south of a line drawn from cast by north to west by south running about two 
miles south of Talchir. 
In several places in the Talchir field iron is worked. Tho ore varies; sometimes the 
ironstones of the Damuda beds are used, but more frequently surface concretions, the supply 
of which is necessarily limited; sometimes the little pisolitic nodules of the laterite are found 
washed from their matrix and deposited in sufficient quantities in alluvial formations to be 
worth collecting. In one instance noticed, the ore was derived from the metamorphic rocks 
* Not near Ongdi (that is, not near tire town so called,) as misprinted in Memoirs, Geological Survey of India, 
I, p. 61. The village is about 10 miles north-west of Gopalprasad. 
Note .—The foregoing sketch of the Geology of Orissa was prepared for nse in the proposed general Gazetteer 
of India, now in course of preparation, under the direction of W. W. Hunter, Lb. D. 
