Reviews—Medlicott’s Southern Himalayan Ranges. 313 
doing he is ‘accepting the practice of English field-geologists’! He 
believes that ‘the usual glossary-meaning of the word is a sharp 
sandstone, coarse or fine:’ we have always thought that a grit was 
simply a very coarse sandstone, or in other words something between 
a sandstone and a conglomerate. To know what a ‘slate-grit’ may 
be, in this Memoir, needs a special revelation from the author, who, 
we hope, in his next will either use such common words in their 
well-known and accepted sense, or will favour his readers with a 
glossary of his own peculiar dialect. In applying ‘schist’ to foliated 
rocks only, he does, however, agree with English geologists. 
In the outer zones of the Lower Himalayas, the ridges are along 
synclinals, and in some hills there is even a ‘quaquaversal con- 
vergence of dips,’ the result of which is to form, with the help of 
denudation, a deep crater-like hollow at the top. We would remark 
that this inwards dip is the one most likely to save the beds from 
denudation, as there is no tendency for masses to slip off in any 
direction ; but, on the other hand, they tend to slide inwards along 
the lines of bedding. Mr. Ruskin has drawn attention to this and 
other like matters in vol. iv. of ‘Modern Painters.’ At p. 34, Mr. 
Medlicott notices that at Simla the upper rocks have been more 
altered than the lower, and also ‘show much more local crushing and 
contortion.’ This phenomenon in metamorphism is not, of course, 
noted here for the first time, as it has been proved that in the Scotch 
Highlands a Lower Silurian quartzite overlies unaltered red con- 
elomerates of Cambrian age. At p. 72 we have a slight disagree- 
ment with the brothers Schlagintweit: what they took for cleavage, 
Mr. Medlicott says is a very good example of bedding ; and he states 
that he could see no general system of cleavage in the district. 
The lower set of rocks being dismissed, the Sub-Himalayan Series, 
the special object of the Memoir, is described. Of these, the lowest 
group, the Subathu beds, we are told (pp. 74-6) are of Nummulitic 
age, and of varied mineral character; they ‘rest upon a deeply 
denuded surface of the Lower Himalayan rocks;’ their ‘ present 
boundary’ seems to have been nearly their ‘original limit of deposi- 
tion ;’ and the lower rocks ‘had undergone comparatively little 
disturbance’ before their deposition. ‘This last, however, seems to 
us hardly to agree with the deep denudation of the older rocks before 
the deposition of the newer on them: and the author, indeed, qualifies 
the statement at p. 86, where he states that the denudation implies 
disturbance, but he thinks that it was not of that sort which causes 
contortion or bending, and that this pre-nummulitic elevation took 
place on the same lines as those that now mark the Himalayan 
system, which therefore would not result from one upheaval, after 
the deposition of the Sub-Himalayan beds. Mr. Medlicott is of 
opinion that ‘the Nummulitic Limestone of the Salt-range is the 
open-sea contemporary of the Subathu group,’ though none of the 
fossils yet known are common to both groups. ‘The junction of the 
Subathu beds with the overlying Nahun beds looks like an immense 
fault: there are no outliers of the latter on the former, and no inliers 
of the former within the area of the latter. The author thinks that 
