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



disruption being frequently impossible to trace. Limestone tracts are 

 often found with a gentle slope in a peculiar semi-disintegrated state, 

 the rock although not being in situ is yet unmixed with fragments 

 of other rocks and retains sufficient of a former stratigraphical pos'ition 

 to conceal the beds beneath. Outlying patches of such half-degraded 

 rock may be sometimes seen in contact with, or resting lapon, a lower 

 group, to the exclusion of other intervening layers washed out from 

 beneath. 



In parts of this dislocated country as many as twenty chief lines of 

 division may be traced, often between widely different and abnormally 

 placed rock masses, and taking as many different directions within one 

 square mile as there are lines; where such confusion prevails, the 

 difficulty of distinguishing between faulting and land-slip sometimes 

 becomes an impossibility. All this dislocation and disarrangement is 

 generally referable to geological and stratigraphic structure, and espe- 

 cially to the occurrence of soft saline marl, gypsum and rock-salt 

 beneath superincumbent masses of hard solid limestone, or other rock, 

 having allowed the upper bed to sink into any accidental position of rest 

 as the action of disintegration went on. 



In the Upper Punjab rains are scarce or inconstant, capricious or 



limited, in great measure, to hills of greater altitude 

 Atmospheric influences. 



and extent than the Salt Range ; the climate of the 



country is marked by a large daily range of the thermometer; the 



seasons are extreme, and for most of the winter months the conditions of 



a desert prevail — intensely dry air and bright sun during the day, and 



excessive radiation of heat, causing frost, at night. Such atmospheric 



influences are most likely to operate strongly in altering the form of the 



ground, particularly where many of the rocks are absorptive or saline as 



in this district. Add to these the effects of the strong dry winds 



which prevail at certain seasons, and it will be readily understood, 



that with heavy rains succeeding intervals of drought, there are causes 



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