286 A NATURALIST IN HIMALAYA 



Passing from the moist and fruitful shale, we come 

 upon a dark sandstone weathering to a brown |iue, 

 and dense beds of a compact limestone studded with 

 countless shells. The stone is thick with these 

 remains. On the weathered surface they appear in 

 mild relief with lines shaded in pink and blue that 

 decorate the rock with innumerable broken curves. 

 More beds of a yellow shale and a narrow ferrugineous 

 band with spherical granules of iron surmount the 

 shelly limestone. 



Leaving the Jurassic, we come upon the Cretaceous. 

 This is a narrow strip of rock some ten feet in thick- 

 ness. It is an orange-coloured sandstone showing 

 here and there an ammonite which, in our efforts to 

 extract, falls to fragments in our hands. 



Now we reach the great Tertiary formation that 

 covers so vast an area of Hazara and ascends into its 

 forest-clad hills. This is the Nummulitic series of 

 limestones, sandstones and shales. The lowest beds 

 are barren of remains, but the higher strata are studded 

 with many nummulites. Other shells appear on the 

 weathered surface. Small but nearly perfect specimens 

 of Pecten are visible on the shale and the imprints of 

 Echinoids in the grey limestone. The nummulites 

 swarm through the rock ; in one square inch of surface 

 I counted 120 of these little foraminifers. Small and 

 indistinct in the limestone, they led a more vigorous 

 life during the deposition of the shales. There we find 

 the same crowds of nummulites, but larger, more 

 robust and perfect specimens, displaying after all these 

 ages the original beauty of their fragile structure, the 

 delicacy of the fine septa and the symmetry of the 

 embracini^ whorls. 



