90 WYNNE : GEOLOGY OP THE SALT RANGE IN THE PUNJAB. 



The thickness of this dolomitic and sandy group, where well de- 

 veloped, is more than three hundred feet, and its average may be 

 between one hundred and fifty and two hundred feet. 



If we were to follow the apparently natural and conformable suc- 

 cession from this group upwards anywhere about Khewra or the neigh- 

 bouring eastern part of the range, the following beds would occur in 

 succession : first a brilliant red group, then olive beds, and then a lime- 

 stone group finally overlaid by a mass of grey and greenish sandstones 

 and reddish clays. The sequence would be true and natural no doubt, but 

 not the whole troth, for four other zones having their places between 

 this magnesian sandstone and the " olive beds" above-mentioned would 

 be unnoticed, not being present in the eastern area. 



Speckled Sandstone. 



No. 5. — Of these four groups the first indications of that which pro- 

 perly succeeds the last become visible to the west- 

 Commencement. ^ • n • 



ward about Makrach ; the group rapidly increases 



in thickness, and extends throughout the range, its importance growing 

 less beyond the Chiderii hills, but the beds appearing frequently along 

 the southern edge of the larger elevations culminating in Tredian Hill, 

 and being only lost amid the complicated dislocations in the neighbour- 

 hood of Mali on the Indus. 



This group of beds consists, as a mass, of light-coloured and reddish 



or purplish speckled sandstones alternating with 



red clays and shales, and including some very 



distinctly marked lavender-coloured and purple or gi-ayish argillaceous 



and gypseous bands. The latter from their deliquescent nature yield so 



rapidly to the action of the weather that the original rock can seldom be 



seen, so thickly is the outcrop covered with its own detritus in the form 



of sun-dried or powdery mud. These bands occur 

 Lavender clays. ...... 



at various heights in the group, but are generally 

 ( 90 ) 



