10 WYNNE : GEOLOGY OF THE SALT RANGE IN THE PUNJAB. 



In a letter to Sir R. I. Murchlson,"^ Major Vicary details numerous 

 Major Vicary, Decern- cursory observations upon the geology of the 

 ber 1850. Upper Punjab, made while campaigning in the 



country, his military movements being too rapid to permit of closer 

 observation. His route may be traced, but roughly, by the villages and 

 passes, &c., which he names ; he thus seems to have crossed the extreme 

 easterly portion of the district under notice, and " had reason to think 

 the red shales and clays, sandstone, and conglomerate beds beneatV^ — to 

 which he applied the term eocene — were "the same formation so produc- 

 tive of salt near Pind-Dadun-Khan -" indeed, he extends the observation, 

 and from the accounts of Dr. Fleming and Dr. H . Falconer, concludes that 

 the red shales near Subathu, Nahu (Nahun), and Mandl were all on the 

 same horizon as the salt-bearing zone of the Salt Range. 



Major Vicary separated the tertiary rocks through which he chiefly 

 marched, into eocene red beds, bone-bearing Sewalik, and an extensive 

 deep-bedded pliocene group. 



Captain Strachey, in his Himalayan paper,t makes but slight refer- 

 ence to the Salt Range : he describes a persistent 

 Captain Strachey, 1851. 



belt of (Sewalik) tertiary strata supposed to be- 

 long to the miocene period as extending along the whole flank of the 

 Himalaya from the Sutlej to the meridian of Calcutta, with an inter- 

 vening zone between it and the mountains, " chiefly consisting of light- 

 coloured sandstones often containing small seams of lignite and imper- 

 fect vegetable impressions, often associated with marls and gypsum, and 

 sometimes with salt springs. ^^ These he supposes, from their abnormal 

 dip towards the mountains, to have been brought into position by a series 

 of great faults at the foot of the range. He mentions that they are sur- 

 mised, from their mineral character, to be of the saliferous age, and that 

 ___^ _^___^ t 



* On the Geology of the Upper Punjab and Peshawur : Proceedings, Geol. Soc, London, 

 Vol. VII, p. 39, &c. 



t On the Geology of part of the Himalaya Mountains and Tibet, by Capt. Eichai-d 

 Strachey, Bengal Engineers, P.G.S., Proc, Geol. Soc, London, Vol. VII, p. 293, &c„ June 

 185L 



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