IttTRODtJCTORY. I / 



group No. 6, that the presence of this distinctly miocene formation should 

 not have been recognized by palseontologists earlier than was the ease, 

 and that its characteristic fossils, such as Clypeaster and Breynia, should so 

 long- have been classed as eocene. Captain Vicary' s No. 7 is much less 

 distinctly identified. It is difficult to tell what fossils he referred to as 

 u Hypponyces;" but from a remark of his at page 343, that portions of 

 some broken specimens were one inch and a half in thickness, it is not 

 improbable that he was alluding to shells of Nerita schmideliana, the upper 

 surface of which is patelliform. 1 As the species is not found in the 

 Nari beds, it is evident, as indeed is manifest from other facts, that Captain 

 Vicary confounded part of the Khirthar group, and also some beds of 

 the inferior Eanikot formation, with the Nari group, which is certainly 

 his No. 7 in places, e.g., at page 339. His group No. 9, " black slates/' 

 must, I think, have been some of the dark-coloured shales which are 

 interstratified in places with the nummulitic limestone. 



One part of Captain Vicary 's observations was singularly unfor- 

 tunate. Misled by the imperfect maps of the period, which represented 

 one range of hills extending down the right bank of the Indus from the 

 Punjab to the sea, he seems to have confounded every hill he saw to 

 the westward of his journey with a mythical ' Hala range/ He thought 

 he saw this range running out into the sea at Cape Monze ; he observed 

 it again west of Kotri ; he climbed to its summit at Gaza Pir ; and he 

 penetrated its outskirts at the Gaj river. Now, this Hala range was as 

 utter a myth as the mountains of the moon, and instead of one great range 

 of nummulitic limestone, as Vicary seems to have supposed, there are 

 several ranges entirely distinct from each other, and not always com- 

 posed of the same rocks. Moreover, not one of these ranges is now or 

 ever was known in the country as the Hala range. Had the matter 

 ended here, it would have mattered little, but this mythical Hala range 

 has a charmed life in geological works, and, with the Hydra-like vitality 

 of error, will doubtless survive, in association with the imaginary 



1 1 formerly (Rec. G. S. I., 1876, ix, p. 10 note), having overlooked the remark quoted 

 ahove, suggested that the Rypponyces of Captain Vicary might be Lunulites. 



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