30 2 Journal of Travel and Natural History 



If this is the case with fossil remains, so old as the Sewalik beds 

 themselves, it can excite no surprise that, at any rate, the crocodile 

 of a period long subsequent to the consolidation and upheaval of 

 these very beds should be so. 



This is not the only instance of such an occurrence. According 

 to M. Duveyrier, exactly the same thing has happened in the desert 

 of Sahara. He tells us (" Explorations du Sahara," p. 29 and 232), 

 that the crocodile still lives on the north side of the Saharan 

 desert, particularly in the little lakes of Mihero, which must have 

 once formed part of the great Saharan sea. 



The idea that a breed of the crocodiles could, or would, have 

 been brought over the desert, and deposited in the oases by na- 

 tives, seems to be wholly without foundation. It involves an anti- 

 cipation of and preparation for the future greatly beyond the intel- 

 ligence or practice of the present natives. The occurrence of a 

 fresh water dolphin (Platanista Inda) in the Indus is another fact 

 which seems to point to a change from a marine bay to a fresh 

 water lake; for the dolphin is a marine animal, although capable of 

 living for a time in fresh water. A slow change from salt to fresh 

 might have kept the species alive until it, as well as the medium 

 in which it lived, were changed. The only other fresh water 

 dolphins (one in the Ganges and one in the Amazons) doubtless 

 owe their origin to similar machinery. 



The salt ranges of the Punjaub have no relation to this sequence 

 of events. Any deposits of salt that might have been left, as in 

 other cases by the drying up of a sea, could not occur here ; for, by 

 our hypothesis, before it was dried up, the sea had become fresh 

 water, of course from the flow of fresh water into it from 

 the snowy range of the Himmalayahs. No salt lakes or in- 

 crustations of salt or soda, as in the deserts in North-west 

 America or the Sahara, occur in the sandy wastes of the 

 Punjaub. The salt in the salt ranges is derived, not from sur- 

 face deposits at all, but from beds in strata, at least as old as the 

 new red sandstone, if not referable to the still older period — the 

 carboniferous epoch. 



Mr Adams' description of this remarkable district is as follows : — 



" The salt range extends from the Himmalayahs across the runjaubin about a 

 straight hne to the Suliman mountains on their west flank, and is composed of 

 low hills, intersected by narrow ravines or prominent ridges, for the most part 

 devoid of vegetation. Limestones, saliferous red and grey sandstones, would ap- 

 pear to form the chief geological formations, which, according to Professor 



