16 
[VOL. IV. 
Results of an enquiry into an alleged discovery of Coal near Gooty, and 
of indications of Coal in Cuddapah District, by R. Bruce Foote, f. g. s., 
Geological Survey of India. 
Dr. Hunter in his letter to the Madras Government which I perused by desire of the 
Hon’ble R. S. Ellis, c. B., the Chief Secretary, stated that he was led to examine a certain 
piece of ground lying west of the Adoni road, and about five miles from Gooty, by hearing 
from a Sergeant Fenner, stationed at that place, that he had picked up fragments of coal at 
the above spot. 
Dr. Hunter himself picked up one or two more fragments of coal, lying loose on the 
surface, at the same place, and from this inferred the existence of coal below the surface, and 
recommended that a further search should be carried out by means of ‘ borings.’ 
In order that no possible mistake should arise in identifying the spot in question, I 
requested Sergeant Fenner to become my guide to it, and accordingly visited it under his 
guidance. 
The place I was taken to proved to be situate among the metamorphic rocks, which, at 
that spot, consist of an extremely hard, massive and highly crystalline variety of granite- 
gneiss, forming a low rocky hill west of Yerragoody tank. This granite-gneiss, which 
weathers into great tors and rounded lumps, is of a pale, pinkish or greyish white color 
(when freshly broken) speckled with small crystals of black mica in considerable numbers. 
Both here and throughout the neighbourhood it is traversed by trap-dykes (generally of 
green stone) and small quartz veins. 
It was very evident- therefore the coal fragments collected here could not have been 
derived from the underlying rock, but must have come from elsewhere, but no younger rocks 
out of which they might have been washed, or weathered, occur anywhere in the immediate 
vicinity. The nearest place at which younger rocks occur is fully eight miles to the eastward 
where beds of quartzite and limestone appear; these belong to the Cuddapah (Kadapah) series 
which is nowhere known to contain coal or any carbonaceous mineral. That the fragments of 
coal found by Dr. Hunter and Sergeant Fenner could not have been washed there out of the 
Cuddapah rocks is quite clear, as no drift of any kind occurs at the level where the fragments 
in question were found, which cannot be less than from 30 to 50 feet above the nearest valley, 
that of the little stream which fills the Yerragoody tank. Furthermore the fragments of 
coal in question are perfectly angular, with an unweathered surface, never liaving been 
rolled by water. 
No fragments of coal remained at the time of my visit to the Yerragoody hill. 
Sergeant Fenner pointed out as “most favorable indications of' coal” according to 
Dr. Hunter, what proved to be the rather decomposed surface of a small trap-dyke exposed 
in a ballast pit close to the road. A hummocky intrusion of coarse dioritie trap was, on 
the same authority, given as “ iron ore.” 
In conclusion, I have no hesitation in believing that the fragments of coal found by 
Dr. Hunter and Sergeant Fenner had been brought to the spot where found by some human 
agency. 
They were either brought from a coal depfit belonging to Mr. E. W. Barnett, C. E., 
tiie Railway Contractor, the remains of which may still bo seen at the spot where the Gooty- 
Adoni road crosses the railway, a distance of only three miles from the Yerragoody hill, 
or else they may have been dropped from the carts in which Mr. Barnett carted a quantity 
of coal up to Adoni, previous to the time of Dr. Hunter’s visit. 
