98 A. B. Wynne — The Glacial Period in Upper India. 



Ind. Eecords, vol. xiii. pt. 4.' After referring to the distribution of 

 the blocks which 1 have called " the Indus drift," he contends that they 

 occur only on the surface of fluviatile deposits, and hence that they 

 must form parts of lateral moraines or other glacially transported 

 detritus, it would seem according to his view deposited from the 

 melting both of solid glaciers and also of floating-ice. Where the 

 limit between these two varieties of ice agency occurs he does not 

 indicate, and it does not appear how his glaciers traversed the 

 fluviatile deposits without disturbing them or sweeping them away. 



It seems to be generally received that towards the close of the 

 great Tertiary period in the Punjab, during which rocks to the 

 thickness of some miles were deposited, and the successive stages 

 of the elevation of the Himalayas took place, one of the last up- 

 heavals of these mountains occurred. It may also be considered 

 highly probable that these earth-movements of the Himalaya were 

 not always conterminous with the extent of the whole chain. 

 However this may be, I have met with some evidence which may 

 point to the possibility that the western or Punjab portion of the 

 mountains was even so recently as during Post-Tertiary times much 

 more elevated than it is at present. 



On two of the outer ranges, at heights of many hundred feet 

 above the Indus, near the summits of the Chita and Salt Eanges in 

 the vicinity of this river, I have found either coarse river-like 

 deposits or scattered irregularly-shaped and rounded dark or 

 variously-coloured river-stones, consisting of precisely the same 

 Himalayan rocks as are now being rolled southwards by the river 

 through its gorges far below. Upon these facts I rested the sup- 

 position that the river channel was once situated at a height of 

 something like a thousand or fifteen hundred feet above its present 

 level, ^ in which case the neighbouring ranges of the Himalaya, as 

 far as the sources of the river, might also have been much more 

 lofty. 



1 In this publication my colleague has scarcely given an accurate view of ray 

 statements or opinions. His suggestion that I thought the Indus had abandoned its 

 deep rocky gorge at the Chita range since this was "formed is not warranted by any- 

 thing I have written. His view that stones from the bed of that river were carried up 

 to villages on the summits of the range named, by their inhabitants for the pui-pose 

 of decorating graves, had of course suggested itself to me, and been rejected for 

 want of evidence that such villages or the graves of their inhabitants ever existed 

 there. He classes me by implication as one of his Antiglacialists, because I have 

 refrained from advocating his theory, for want of conclusive evidence. "With these 

 exceptions, and a few others of minor importance as to his limitation of the localities 

 occupied by the travelled blocks, I only regret that the paper seems to prove nothing 

 in support of the author's views as to the connexion between the blocks and glaciation 

 at low levels in India. 



2 In the paper alluded to before, Mr. Theobald argues that the Indus did not cross 

 the Chita Range at a higher level, because he failed to find its erratics [i.e. trans- 

 ported debris) , caught in clefts between the limestone crags of the range. From his 

 reference it would appear likely that he only crossed one or other of the low passes of 

 the range by road, where the limited nature of his observations might lessen their force, 

 if this were not entirely set aside by the fact that the mountain surface of that 

 period must long since have been removed by denudation. The argument, however, 

 was not that the river had wandered, but that it ran at a much higher level nearly 

 at the same place. 



