SUMMARY. 281 



old as Silurian^ if not older ; aud two others, if not of this age, or car- 

 boniferous, must be intermediate. 



From the top downwards, seven of these thirteen groups are syn- 

 chronous with the five newest systems of the geological scale ; the 

 permian is not represented, but the carboniferous is largely developed in 

 comparison with some of the others. 0£ the two groups immediately 

 beneath the carboniferous formation, there is no reason why either should 

 be called devonian or " old red sandstone.-" The lowest, however, appears 

 to have a close relation, in some parts of the range, with the silurian zone 

 beneath ; and of the remaining two, nothing can be said as to whether 

 one or both may be silurian or older. 



Of this series, there are no close petrographic representatives known 

 Eelations to neighbour- i^ the neighbouring parts of the Punjab hitherto 

 iug geology. inspected, if we except the tertiary sandstones and 



clays. The nummulitie limestones difier considerably from the large 

 development of these rocks to the north. The cretaceous beds are dif- 

 ferent, both in character and fossils, from others met with, as are also 

 the Jurassic rocks ; the mixed and variegated arenaceous, argillaceous, 

 and calcareous group of the Salt Range bears no similarity to the 

 Spiti-shales of the mountains on the outskirts of the north-west 

 Himalaya. The triassic rocks with their abundance of Ceratites are also 

 different from the strong limestone series of the latter region ; and the 

 underlying groups have no representatives around, so far as known, until 

 the countries of Kashmir and Spiti are reached.* In the former, the 

 carboniferous rocks have yielded to Captain Godwin-Austen some half a 

 dozen or eight fossil species, known already to occur in this formation in the 

 Salt Range ; and from Dr. Stoliczka^s Memoir on the North-Western 



* The resemhlance of the purple sandstone group to some red sandstones below, or 

 in, the trias near Abbottabad, is much too slight to rely upon as any proof of their identity j 

 and the carboniferous rocks mentioned as occurring near Abbottabad, in Dr. Verchere's 

 paper, previously quoted, have no existence. See Memoirs of the Geological Survey of 

 India, Vol. IX, part 2. 



-M.% ( ^81 ) 



