PART L] 
Medlicull : Geology of North- West Provinces. 
] 5 
within these provinces were some indeterminate casts of bivalves from a band of limestone 
in the gorge of the Tal river, at the east end of the Dehra-Dun. The lead-mines of Sirrnur 
and those near Subathu are in this series of rocks. Trappean intrusions occur at many 
places in them. 
The metamorphic series. —At many places, as on the Simla section, there is a complete 
transition from the slate series into the crystalline schist series, through a graduated meta- 
morpliism. Elsewhere the passage is abrupt, as in the valley north of Naini Tal, where the 
junction is complicated by profuse trappean intrusion. The great mass of the lower Hima¬ 
layan region, and also of the snowy range, is composed of crystalline schists, gneiss, and 
granite. There is a large mass of intrusive granite near Almora. Copper ores occur at many 
places, and are worked by the natives. They have not been favorably reported ou by Euro¬ 
pean mineral-viewers. There are also many line bands of rich iron ore; but the inacces¬ 
sibility of the ground prevents their being extensively used. Impure graphite is found in 
several places. 
III.— The Peninsular region. 
Although the rock-area south of the plains and within the North-Western Provinces is 
very small, it forms an extended line; and thus it includes representatives of the principal 
rock-series of Hindustan, excepting only the Deccan trap formation and the cretaceous rocks 
below it. There are thus to bo noticed— 
The coal-bearing series. 
The Vindhyan series. 
The slate series. 
The schist and gneiss series. 
The coal-bearing series. —The great plant-bearing series of rocks, so widely scattered 
over India, has been divided in different basins into a number of well-marked groups. But 
the characters of many of those sub-divisions, or their equivalence in time, do not exactly 
correspond from one basin to another, so that it is impossible as yet to adopt a scale of 
groups applicable throughout. The two bottom groups of the series are the most widely 
distributed and the most constant in character. The Talchlrs, the lowest group, is of 
special interest as exhibiting undoubted glacial action in very ancient rocks (probably 
Pakeozoie), and in what is now an iutertropical latitude. The most characteristic bed of 
this group is a fine greenish-gray silt, in which there frequently occur huge boulders of rock, 
sometimes ronnded, and sometimes, in the same spot, quite angular, occasionally polished 
and deeply grooved by friction; just as is at present only known to occur in glacial deposits. 
It is not possible at present to conjecture to what conditions—whether to great elevation, 
or to change of climate from cosmical causes—these phenomena were due. In most of 
the fields throughout India the coal-measures are confined to the Barakar group, which 
is largely made up of coarse fe)spathic sandstones. 
In British Singrowli, the southern extremity of the Mirzapur District, there are 
about forty square miles of the Talchir group exposed; and about twenty more overlaid by 
the Barakars. Erom the Kota mine in Singrowli all the coal was procured, which used in 
old times to be carried on pack-bullocks for forty miles, across the Vindhyan plateau, to 
Mirzapur, for the steamers on the Ganges. The sandstone forming the small plateau over 
the coal-measures at Kota probably belongs to one of the upper groups of the series. This 
is the only patch of this series of rocks within the North-Western Provinces. It is the 
eastern extremity of the great central basin of South Riwah. 
The Vindhyan series ■ its characters. —The base of the plant-bearing series is separated 
all over India by total unconformity, involving a great break in time, from the next preced¬ 
ing formation, which is known as the Vindhyan series. The precise range of this series has 
