Abstract
IN this handy little volume the author presents us with a compendium of the facts known concerning the occurrence and distribution of the three principal mineral products of India. The work being so designed that it may be used as a handbook to the detailed accounts published by the Geological Survey of India and by other authorities in numerous scattered publications to which full references are given. In the first chapter the different localities producing diamonds, including both active and abandoned mines, are noticed in some detail. These are grouped into three areas, the most southerly being that to which the name of Golconda is usually applied, although, as the author points out, that town is not actually in a diamond producing district, but was the staple place where the product of the district was bought and sold. The actual mines are in the southern part of the Madras presidency, in the districts of Kadapah, Karnul, Kistna, and Godaveri. The second great tract, further to the north, lies between the Mahanadi and Godaveri rivers, the chief localities being at Sambalpur and Weiragud, eighty miles south-east from Nagpore, and at a few places in Chota Nagpore. The third great tract is in the vicinity of Panna in Bandelkhand. In addition to these a few small diamonds are reported to have been found near Simla. In all cases the diamonds appear to have been found in sandstones or conglomerates, or in the gravels derived from their alteration. These sandstones are referred in the southern localities to the lowest member of the Karnul formation, which as a whole is considered to be the equivalent of the lower part of the so-called Vindhyan formation of Northern India. An upper group of the latter, the Rewah conglomerate, being the diamond-bearing bed in Bandelkhand, There does not appear to be any authenticated instance of a diamond being found in India in other than sedimentary rocks. One case; however, at p. 49, where the matrix is said to be “a network of strings of calc spar inclosing laminæ and small lumps of green clay,” suggests the possibility of the material in question being a decomposed basalt or basaltic tuff, and as such comparable with the South African occurrences. What the present total production of the mines may be we are left to guess; as far as can be gathered from the scattered notices collected by the author, the larger number of the mines are of historical interest only.
The Diamonds, Coal, and Gold of India.
By V. Ball 12mo. (London: Trübner, 1881.)
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B., H. The Diamonds, Coal, and Gold of India . Nature 24, 579–580 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/024579b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/024579b0
