Official classified and descriptive catalogue of the contributions from India to the London Exhibition of 1862 : forwarded through the Central Committee for Bengal, compiled under the authority of the government of India / by A.M. Dowleans.

  • Dowleans, A. M., active 1851-1862.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Official classified and descriptive catalogue of the contributions from India to the London Exhibition of 1862 : forwarded through the Central Committee for Bengal, compiled under the authority of the government of India / by A.M. Dowleans. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    21/340 (page 3)
    SECTION L—KAW MATERIALS.—(Continued.) General Number. Invoice Number. Scientific or English Name. Provincial Name. Locality where produced. Remarks. English iron having originally been smelted from an inferior ore (the clay ironstone) and with mineral coal, is almost unworkable by native blacksmiths. The greater portion of the ores, which are spread very largely over the table-lands of the Kymore plateau and in the face of its precipices, are found on what is generally supposed to be the old red sandstone superlying mountain, now fossiliferous limestone; but as the best authorities have not decided yet the age of those rocks, I shall follow the generally assumed theory and call the rocks, as Colonel Sherwill has done, the old red sandstone. The whole of the Kymore range thus appears to consist of old red sandstone rock, superlying mountain limestone of indefinite thickness, while the jasper rock and trap rock, cropping out occasionally in the Soane, near the base of the main spur, which is the Rohtas range (a minor spur of the Kymore range), would lead us to suppose that strata was the underlying one of the mountain limestone. Again, at Chynepore and at Sonar, near Sasseram, and in other localities, igneous action appears to have taken place upon the sandstone, more or less, rendering it intensely hard and flinty, while interstices here and there are filled with sulphate of iron and a substance resembling iron slag, almost as hard and heavy as iron itself. A little further south, about 7 miles from the southern base of the Sasseram spur, an oflshoot of the Rohtas range is found in tiie granite rocks of Bunmonee, cropping up above the surface to heights vary- ing from one to 60 or 70 feet. These rocks are full of frag- ments of felspar, hornblende, and quartz, in large and broken masses, and would appear to have been mixed with the great mass while in a soft and ductile state. The base of the whole is a coarse granite. Thus we have three different bases cropping out, which must either wholly or in part underlie the sandstone; 1st, the jasper and trap rock in the Soane; the semi-igneous rock at Chynepore, and the wholly igneous one of Sonar; and, lastly, the conglomerate granite rocks of Bunmonee ; while up to the present time, the mountain limestone, which is the visible base, leaves us in the dark as to its origin by a total absence of fossil remains. Although there is abundance of mineral coal in South Mirzapore, in Palamow, Singrowlie, and Rewah, native smelters use only wood charcoal prepared by themselves, and as their furnaces and tools are small, they can all be constructed and arranged by one man in half a day; this fuel and ore are close at hand to the furnace, the latter being re-made further in the jungle to suit their main requirements, while the wretched hut in which they live may well be pre- pared in the half day remaining. The process employed by the smelters is a very simple one indeed. The furnace is built of clay, something like a small hollow cone; larger in the middle, and tapering up to the chimney and down to the blow hole, with a table at the top formed of bamboos, covered with clay, and of about 2 to 2J superficial feet in area. The internal area of the furnace is not more than 2 to 2J cubic feet, and is not more than 2^ to 3 feet in height. There are two round calabashes with a skin covering, and a string connected with