GEOLOGICAL FEATURES OF THE HIMALAYAN MOUNTAINS. 
Havre noticed the extent and physical features of the Indian empire, we might proceed to describe 
the materials of which its mountains and its plains are composed, as well as the soils produced by their 
disintegration. But the most cursory notice of the Geological features of so extensive a field would. 
require more space than can be allotted to the subject ; the Author must, therefore, confine himself to the 
part with which he is best acquainted, and which can be elucidated by his specimens and observations, 
which have attained some,value from the kindness, as stated in the Preface, of his friend Mr. De la Beche. 
But the sections can only be considered as giving a general idea of the dip, direction, and nature of 
the formations met with. The sections of the Himalayas correspond with that given, as far as it goes, 
by Dr. Falconer, in his Report on Tea cultivation, though he informs me that mine are erroneous; in the 
parts near the Snowy Peaks, where the Author relied for his information on Capts. Herbert and Hodg- 
son, as, instead of consisting of gneiss, they are formed by one of the grandest outbursts of granite in 
the world. The sections of the Central range of India, from Sherghatty to Roghonautpore, formed by 
Mr. De la Beche, from the Author’s specimens and observations, correspond with that previously pub- 
lished by the Rev. Mr. Everest, in 1831, in the third volume of the Gleanings of Science. 
The great Gangetic valley consists of an extensive plain, which is very gradual in its slope from Saha-_ 
‘runpore to the Sunderbunds, v.p.x. The structure is not easily detected, from the universal flatness, 
and the horizontal nature of the depositions, while water being near the surface, wells, the only works, 
reveal only a few feet in depth below. The surface soil is generally sandy, with a varying proportion of 
clay, which predominates in the substratum, and is in most places sufficiently pure for making bricks. 
Calcareous particles are intermixed with the soil and substratum in most parts. ‘These in many places 
assume the form of spongy cavernous nodules: in some the form of stalactites or of roots, and are then 
apparently of modern origin ; in other places they are in masses sufficiently large to be worked and used 
as a building stone. But the nodular appearance is the most remarkable, especially from the nodules 
being so abundant in some places as to cover the soil, and give the appearance of the surface being 
covered as if with a fall of large hail-stones. This forms the extensively diffused Kunkur formation of 
India. 
In Calcutta, in deepening a tank, a group of full-grown trees were found standing erect, and appa- 
rently lopped off, three or four feet above the roots. In boring for water, rubbish and mould were first 
met with, then sandy clay, and, at twenty feet, a vein of pure sand, the source of the common springs 
of wells. Blue clay, with sand,—then black, above a stratum of peat; with pieces of wood, that of the 
Soondree, and at sixty feet, Kunkur nodules; reddish well-sand at seventy-five feet, whence the river 
3 springs rise. Clays and sands, with some Kunkur, are found below this: a quicksand at 120 to 1386 
feet ; and at 176 feet, quartzy sand and granitic gravel; and from 350 feet below the surface of 
Calcutta, the auger brought up a fossil bone, which is figured in J.A.S. for March 1837. At 
_ Benares, Mr. Prinsep, in cutting a tunnel and sinking shafts, found, fifteen feet below the surface, a 
= rere 2: half-quarried stones of a large size, on what he conceives must formerly have been the level 
of the ground ; at thirty feet, some kunkur was met with. At Saharunpore, in digging a well, after 
| ten feet, coarse moist sand was found, mixed with round pebbles, chiefly of quartz, and about twenty feet 
| feom the surface, pieces of kunkur or tufaceous limestone, were raised, together with dicotyledonous wood, 
apparently of veg of the Conifere. At Bihut, twenty miles north of Saharunpore, Capt. Cautley dis- 
- covered the site of an ancient town seventeen feet below the present surface of the country. The 
Indo- 
