Economic Geology of India 1

Abstract

II. IN a former notice of Prof. Valentine Ball's important work on the “Economic Geology of India,” the sub jects of the gold supply and of that form of carbon known as the diamond, were treated of. In the present notice it is proposed to give a brief account of that more important form of carbon known as coal, as well as to allude to the valuable information given in the chapters on Iron, Salt, and Building-stone. The rocks, which in Peninsular India probably correspond, as regards the time of their formation, to the true carboniferous rocks of Europe, are not coal-bearing, and the oldest coal-measures in the country belong to a period which is well included within the limits of the Upper Palæozoic or Permian, and the Lower Jurassic formations. All the useful coal of the peninsula may conveniently be described I as being of Permio-Triassic age, and, with two exceptions, it may be added, these measures do not occur beyond the limits of the peninsula. In the extra-peninsular area, coal is found in various younger deposits, and there are numerous deposits in Afghanistan, the Punjab, at the foot of the Himalayas, in Assam and Burma, of undoubted Lower Tertiary, Nummulitic, or Eocene coals and lignites; but it is only quite exceptional that such deposits possess any great value (the chief noteworthy exceptions occur in Assam and Burma).