Dr. W. T. Blanford — Age of the Himalayas. 161 



a whole, the processes which have gone on are complex and diverse, 

 and that the microscope is even more than usually in need of 

 chemical aid in attempting to interpret them.^ 



{To be concluded in our next Number.) 



VI. — The Age of the Himalayas. 

 By W. T. Blanford, LL.D., F.E.S., etc. 

 'HEN a case is hopeless, there are two recognized ways of 

 ignoring the fact, and yet of appearing to reply to an 

 adversary. One is the legal device commonly known as ' abusing 

 the plaintiff's attorney,' the other is the equally familiar method of 

 replying to something that the opposite party did not say. The 

 latter has been preferred by my friend Mr. Howorth in his paper 

 on " The Absence of Glacial Phenomena in large parts of Western 

 Asia and Eastern Europe," published in the February Number of 

 the Geological Magazine, pp. 54-64:, as the following instances 

 will show, 



(1) In the August Number of this Magazine for last year (p. 373), 

 I contended that the salt plains of Central Asia afford no proof of 

 the former occupation by the sea or by extensive lakes of the 

 depressions in which salt now collects. I said, however, that the 

 evidence afforded by similar plains in Persia appeared to me at one 

 time so strong that I was led away by it and mistook them for 

 ancient lake-basins. These remarks of mine, which, as anyone may 

 see by referring to them, relate solely to the salt plains, are applied 

 by Mr. Howorth to the observations of Humboldt, Tchihatcheif, 

 Von Gotta and Severtsof on the absence of glacial phenomena in 

 the Urals, Altai Mountains, and Thian Shan range. I thought I 

 had especially guarded myself against being drawn into a dis- 

 cussion about mountains concerning which I know nothing; and 

 I must protest against words of mine relating to one part of the 

 argument, the salt plains, being applied to a distinct subject, the 

 glacial phenomena on mountain ranges. To prevent any mistake, 

 I may add that the circumstance of my declining to discuss any 

 question about these ranges by no means implies that I admit either 

 the accuracy of the views quoted, or of Mr. Howorth's deductions 

 from the quotations. 



(2) I pointed out that Mr. Howorth's argument about the Hima- 

 layas appeared to be this : that if the Himalayas existed during the 



1 It is interesting, in connexion with these fine-grained ash-slates, to refer to 

 the "altered ashes" in the contact-zone of the Shap granite, as described by 

 Harker and Marr. The intimate mixture of chlorite, mica, and quartz gives rise to 

 the much larger mosaic of quartz and biotite. The quartz is converted into much 

 larger individualized grains. The sericitic mica is absorbed into the biotite, as is 

 so usually the case when sedimentary slates are altered by granite-contact. The 

 finely-disseminated garnet (if originally present in the ashes at Shap) is apparently 

 also re-absorbed during these processes, as I have sought for it in vain in many Shap 

 sections. 



In the mosaic of these Shap contact-rocks felspar is sometimes seen, sometimes 

 not, which fact rather lends support to some of the inferences I have drawn as to the 

 interpretation of the analytical results. 



DECADE III, — TOL. IX. NO. IV. II 



