skin, and the consequences of the great hulk of green
food which it consumes.
The Duabanga is the pride of these forests. Its
trunk, from eight to fifteen feet in girth, is generally
forked from the base, and the long pendulous branches
which clothe the trunk for 100 feet, are thickly leafy,
and terminated hy racemes of immense white flowers,
which, especially when in hud, smell most disagreeably
of assafoetida.
The report of a bed of iron-stone eight or ten miles
west of Punkabaree determined us on visiting the
spot; and the locality being in a dense jungle, the
elephants were sent on a-head.
Lohar-ghur, or “ iron hill,” lies in a thick dry
forest. Its plain-ward flanks are very steep, and
covered with scattered weather-worn masses of ochreous
and black iron-stone, many of which are several yards
long: it fractures with faint metallic lustre, and is
very earthy in p a rts ; it does not affect the compass.
There are no pebbles of iron-stone, nor water-worn
rocks of any kind found with it.
Below Punkabaree the Baisarhatti stream cuts
through banks of gravel overlying the tertiary sandstone.
The latter is gritty and micaceous, intercalated
with beds of indurated shale and clay; in
which I found the shaft (apparently) of a bone. In
the bed of the stream were carbonaceous shales, with
obscure impressions of fossil fern leaves, characteristic
of the Burdwan coal-fields, hut too imperfect to
justify any conclusion as to the relation between
these formations.
Ascending the stream, these shales are seen in situ,
overlain hy the metamorphic clay-slate of the mountains.
This is at the foot of the Punkabaree spur, and close
A MECH, NATIVE OF THE SIKKIM TERAI.
to the bungalow, where a stream and land-slip expose
good sections. The coal-seams are few in number, six
to twelve inches thick, very confused, and full of
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