26 TRAPS AND INTERTRAPPEAN BEDS. 



been filled by the traps, eases are common in which no sedimentary 

 deposits whatever underlie the volcanic rocks at the very bottom of these 

 valleys, — a circumstance which would be scarcely possible if the valleys 

 were sub-aqueous at the period of effusion of the traps. Besides, the 

 sedimentary deposits, where they do occur beneath the traps, as near 

 Bagh, have frequently undergone denudation, and, I think, clearly, 

 sub-aerial denudation, before the trap period. As to the absence of 

 stratification (a view never, so far as I am aware, held by any previous 

 Indian observer except Jacquemont), if the constant alternation of 

 different kinds of basalt and amygdaloid, the frequent interbedding of 

 volcanic ash, the numerous occurrences of distinctly sedimentary beds 

 clearly interstratified for miles along the hill sides with the ashes and 

 lava flows, are not evidence of stratification, it is difficult to conceive 

 what evidence would suffice. Where the observations of the Messrs. 

 Sohlagintweit can have been made, which induced them to state that 

 "the horizontal lines of separation between different layers of traps 



are certainly no lines of demarcation between different streams of 



lava,^' that is, I presume, that the horizontal lines in question do not 

 correspond to divisions between rocks differing in mineral character, I 

 am at a loss to conceive. 



( 162 ) 



