536 STEVEXSOX— THE FORMATIOX OF COAL BEDS. [>>'ov. i, 



to nearly 300 miles wide. The lowest point on the divide between 

 the Indus and the Ganges is 924 feet above tide, bvit, in fact, there 

 is no dividing ridge between the two systems and a very trifling 

 change would divert the water from one side to the other — and very 

 probably such changes have occurred. No traces of marine condi- 

 tions appear in upper India since the early Tertiary. There is no 

 proof that the whole of the plain was at any time under water, nor 

 is there any proof that is was not. The Eocene sea occupied the 

 Indus valley to the foot of the Himalayas and extended eastward to 

 Kuchann. But thence to the Gano hills, no trace of marine condition 

 exists. If the Eocene sea occupied the Ganges area, it is strange 

 that no marine forms have been found. The same statement applies 

 to the Brahmapootra plain, which now is in great part too swampy 

 for cultivation. 



IMedlicott^^- says that the Lower and Middle Siwalik formations 

 are composed of immensely preponderating sandstone, with occa- 

 sional thick beds of red clay and rare, thin, discontinuous bands of 

 nodular earthy limestone — the sandstone itself being occasionally 

 calcareous. Conglomerates prevail in the Upper Siwalik and they 

 are often made up of the coarsest shingle, precisely like that in the 

 beds of the great Himalayan torrents. Brown clay occurs frequently 

 with the conglomerate and at times wholly displaces it. This clay, 

 even when pushed to the vertical, cannot be distinguished, in hand 

 specimens, from the recent plains-deposit and no doubt it was formed 

 in the same manner as alluvium. The sandstone of the zone is ex- 

 actly like the sand forming the banks of great rivers, but is more or 

 less consolidated. The suggestion that the Siwalik hills are merely 

 an upraised portion of the India plains was not wholly misleading. 

 At one time, the mass was supposed to be of marine origin — a relic 

 of the old notion that a water-basin was an essential condition for 

 extensive accumulation of deposits, and that a sea-margin was 

 needed for such a spread of shingle as is found in the Siwaliks. 

 The same opinion prevailed concerning the plains themselves. But 

 the ocean had nothing to do with the matter. The mountain torrents 

 are .laying down great masses of shingle and clay on the margins of 



"'H. B. Medlicott, ibid., pp. 524, 525, 541, 672. 



