Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 25.djvu/227

 considerable quantities, being dependent on that province for their supplies, owing to the jealous conduct of the government. Coal which at the pit's mouth costs from 70 to 100 copper cash per picul (say 6s. to 7s. per ton) is sold at Nanking at 750 cash per picul, or over 50s. per ton; the difference in price is partly owing to the length of carriage, some 600 miles, but principally to the heavy exactions levied by the local mandarins.

The northern coal-fields of China are so important, cover such a vast area, and, as yet, have been so imperfectly explored that any more than an allusion to them on my part would be presumptuous. Suffice it, therefore, to say that enormous deposits are known to occur in Shantung, Chihli, Shansi, Shensi, and Kansu in China proper, as well as beyond the frontiers in Mongolia, Manchuria, and Shingking, where the coal-beds come down to the sea-coast.

Above the upper coal-fields in China there seems to occur a break, the next series in ascending order with which I am acquainted lying unconformably over them, generally dipping at small angles and seldom rising to any height over the plains. In the Nanking district it commences with a series of conglomerates, and passes up into a light red sandstone, not unlike the New Red of many parts of England. These finally give place to thick beds of coarse gravel and sand, the gravel generally composed of pebbles from the hardest portions of the siliceous grits of the Tungting series. At Nanking this series is well shown in the Yuhwatai and Tsingliang hills, the latter displaying the lowest beds, the other the summit. From Nanking the beds extend for considerable distances to the south and west, reappearing at various spots in Kiangsu, Anhwei, Kiangsi, and Hupeh. At Tatung on the Yangtse, at the foot of the Wild-Boar Hills, they come down to the river, forming a series of bold bluffs. At Hwangchow, in Hupeh, the upper gravels are exposed likewise in a bold escarpment, running almost under the walls of the city ; near Hwangshihkang, again, they appear in a manner identical with that of their occurrence at Nanking, associated with dark lenticular argillaceous nodules and a few vegetable stems, which seem characteristic of the formation in the province of Hupeh, where it has a very considerable lateral extension. With the exception of these few imperfect stems, I have met with no fossils in the formation, which may be of late Secondary, or even of Tertiary date, passing, as it appears to do, into the succeeding clays. In Kwangtung, again, in the delta of the Canton river, red sandstones reappear, forming low hills in the valleys of the older mountain-ranges ; they are conspicuous in Tiger Island, above the Bogue, at the Second-Bar Pagoda, at Tamchow, where they are extensively quarried, and in most of the low hills in the neighbourhood of Canton and Whampoa. They are harder and darker in colour than those at Nanking, but appear to occupy a similar position ; like them, too, they are, so far as is known, unfossiliferous ; nor do they appear to contain any mineral of economic importance.

These sandstones are succeeded by considerable deposits of clay, which play an important part in the geology of central China.

L 2