10 
Records of (lie Geological Survey of India, 
[VOL. IV. 
Briefly then, four borings had been nearly completed before the Geological Survey had the 
matter brought before them, in all of which coal had been stated to occur at about the same 
depth from the surface. A fifth boring was necessarily abandoned from want of proper tools, 
and the sixth discovered the fraud. The last boring put down close by the first was simply 
put down as a confirmation of the results obtained from the others. And so far no evidence 
whatever has been obtained that coal occurs at all in this Midnapore locality. 
The trick of putting coal down a bore hole so that the boring tools may again bring it up, 
is by no means an unknown one. It has frequently been practised in Europe, &c., and I 
believe this is not the first time it has been resorted to in India either. Some useful lessons 
may possibly he learnt from such a detection. One is tho delay and doubt inevitably 
engendered by the use of inferior and unsuitable tools for such enquiries. Some months 
would have been saved had there been available proper boring tools and piping in the present 
case. And it was simply impracticable with the bad tools at command to keep the boring 
holes as clear and free as they ought to have been. It would also seem both injudicious and, 
therefore, costly to employ doubtful characters in matters when so much must be taken on 
their statements. And certainly, if men arc put to such work, it would be wiser to pay them 
in proportion to the work they are called on to execute. Tho man in charge in the present 
esse was at first a convict, and when released, he received only a wretched pittance, barely 
sufficient to keep him from starving and certainly not sufficient to place him above the 
temptation of trying to eke out his living in other ways. It is highly probable that better 
pay would not have kept him from attempting such frauds, hut the chance of his indulging 
in them would unquestionably have been diminished if he had been placed above want. 
But if such rogueries he sufficient to indicate the serious responsibility which attaches 
to those who without enquiry hurry before the public with highly coloured and exaggerated 
statements of such ‘ discoveries ’ and so mislead every one else, the time and money will have 
been well spent. If there were not a hasty and unthinking desire to gain a little fame 
and reward by the immediate announcement as a discovery of what was quite unproven, I 
have no hesitation in saying that similar tricks, even if once attempted, would certainly not 
be often repeated. 
Major Swayne, the Executive Engineer in charge of the jail works, has throughout 
exhibited a very earnest and intelligent desire to test the truth of the statements made, and 
would certainly have proved the facts before publicly announcing them. 
I refer more particularly to these considerations because as an immediate consequence of 
this much trumpeted discovery of coal at Midnapore, came an urgent request from Madras, 
that a very large reward (two lakhs of rupees, £20,000, was first mentioned, afterwards 
reduced to one-half of a lakh,) should be offered for the discovery of a workable bed of coal 
south of the 17th parallel of latitude in India; the coal to be of a specified quality, and the 
scam of specified dimensions. 
This recommendation was based distinctly and directly on the assumed fact that a bed of 
coal, 13 feet in thickness, had been found at Midnapore beneath a thick superficial deposit of 
laterito, where all the lower rocks cropping out iu the neighbourhood were crystalline and 
much older than the coal-hearing deposits. It was urged that “ the discovery of coal under 
such circumstances is without precedent,” hut that the precedent being once established other 
such discoveries might fairly he looked for elsewhere. And that as it was known that in the 
Madras Presidency vast tracts of country existed in which the geological formation of the 
surface agrees with the above description, no reason appeared why the discovery of coal should 
be a more improbable event there than at Midnapore. 
It might suffice here to point out that as the coal has really not been found at Midnapore, 
all this reasoning, supposed to he safely based on that discovery, must fall to the ground. 
