of them, full of Indian water-lilies, being fringed with
rows of the fan-palm, and occasionally the Indian date.
Close to the house was a rather good menagerie, where
I saw, amongst other animals, a pair of kangaroos in
high health and condition, the female with young in
her pouch. Before dark I was again in my palkee, and
hurrying onwards, refreshed by the cool and clear night
air, so different from the damp and foggy atmosphere I
had left at Calcutta. On the following morning I found
myself travelling over a flat and apparently rising
country, along an excellent road, with groves of
bamboos and stunted trees on either hand, few villages
or palms, a sterile soil, with stunted grass and but
little cultivation; altogether a country as unlike what I
had expected to find in India as well might be. All
around was a dead flat or table-land, out of which a
few conical hills rose in the west, about 1000 feet high,
covered with a low forest of dusky green or yellow,
from the prevalence of bamboo. The lark was singing
merrily at sunrise, and the accessories of a fresh air
and dewy grass more reminded me of some moorland
in the north of England than of the torrid regions of
the East.
At 10 p .m . I arrived at Mr. Williams’ camp, near the
western limit of the coal basin of the Damooda valley.
His operations being finished, he was prepared to
start, having kindly waited a couple of days for my
arrival.
Early on the morning of the last day of January, a
motley group of natives was busy striking the tents,
and loading the bullocks, bullock-carts and elephants;
which then proceeded on the march, occupying in
straggling groups nearly three miles of road.
The coal crops out at the surface; but the shafts
worked are sunk through thick beds of alluvium. The
age of these coal-fields is quite unknown, and I regret
to say that my examination of their fossil plants throws
no material light on the subject. Upwards of thirty
species of these have been procured from them, the
majority of which are referred by Dr. McLelland * to
the inferior oolite epoch of England: most of these are
ferns, some of which are supposed to be the same as
occur in the coal-fields of Sind and of Australia. I
cannot, however, think that botanical evidence of such
a nature is sufficient to warrant a satisfactory reference
of these Indian coal-fields to the same epoch as those
of England or of Australia: in the first place the outlines
of the fronds of ferns and their nervation are frail
characters if employed alone for the determination of
existing genera, and much more so of fossil fragments:
in the second place recent ferns are so widely distributed,
that an inspection of the majority affords little
clue to the region or locality they come from: and in
the third place, considering the wide difference in latitude
and longitude of Yorkshire, India, and Australia,
the natural conclusion is that they could not have
supported a similar vegetation at the same epoch. In
fact, finding similar fossil plants at places widely different
in latitude, and therefore in climate, is, in the
present state of our knowledge, rather an argument
against than for their having existed cotemporaneously.
* Reports of the Geological Survey of India. Calcutta, 1850.