258 WYNNE : GEOLOGY OF THE SALT EANGE IN THE PUNJAB. 



times extending outwards to the plain and sometimes interrupted, allowing" 

 the " red salt-marl'' and the overlying "speckled sandstone'' groups to 

 appear below it ; but the " purple sandstones^ " unless represented here 

 and there by the dark conglomeratic shales with crystalline blocks (as 

 at Swas village), are entirely absent. (See section, fig. 50, PI. XXVIII.) 



In the neighbourhood of Sw^s the whole of the rocks are greatly 

 contorted ; they are very often vertical or even 

 inverted, the carboniferous limestone here making 

 some of the roughest and most impracticable country in the range ; but 

 the general succession and the dip of the rocks is from south-westward 

 to the north-east and north-north-east. The trias is less strongly 

 developed than before, and much less in thickness than the Jurassic 

 group. The carboniferous limestone hills are often capped by the 

 lowest beds of the trias, and fine precipices are composed entirely of 

 the former. The " speckled sandstones " still have their accompanying 

 clays above, while beneath them is a mass 150 feet in thickness, 

 of the purplish black conglomeratic clay with metamorphic pebbles, 

 associated with and underlying which is the gypseous red salt-marl. 

 (See sections, figs. 50 and 51, Plate XXVIII.) 



Further north-west the triassic beds may average only about 100 



feet in thickness. The carboniferous limestones 



Succession near Ghari. 11,1,1111 -, 



below often contain much chert, both black and 



white ; while grey conglomerates and sandstone bands occur in the dark 

 conglomeratic purple clay above the salt-marl. In this dark conglomer- 

 atic mass near Ghari some grey limestone pebbles were observed^ and 

 also layers of a calcareous nature with thin shaly bands, the dark earthy 

 lower portion being 188 feet thick. Immediately over the earthy part 

 is a large boulder-conglomerate containing blocks of granite, syenite, and 

 other crystalline rocks two feet in diameter ; this conglomerate, if it has 

 not slipped upon itself, may be 155 feet in thickness. The speckled 

 sandstone succeeding is not particularly well exposed. 



The carboniferous limestone is thinner-bedded and of darker colour 

 than usual ; it is magnesian in places, and contains brown sandy bands 

 ( 258 ) 



