42 WYNNE : TRANS-INDUS EXTENSION OF THE PUNJAB SALT RANGE. 



Taking" the country on both sides o£ the Indus as one complex of 

 disorder, it is strange that in spite of the disruption of the series, the strike 

 of the range retains its local north-north-west course for 10 miles. 

 "Within this distance, the formations, of which fragments are present, may 

 be fairly presumed to have once extended over the whole ground, their 

 local absence being due to dislocation, but whether those entirely wanting 

 ever existed here can only be guessed at from their character elsewhere. 

 Thus the purple and the speckled sandstone groups seem to have died out, 

 one or both, here or there, before their disappearance some way south of 

 Mari, but beds belonging to the fugitive soft boulder group are seen in a 

 few places. Hence it appears the partial distribution of the older groups 

 leaves it possible the ubiquitous red salt-marl may never have been en- 

 tirely covered over by them here. This seems more likely than that the 

 missing series has been removed by denudation, sparing only the very 

 softest and most soluble deposits. The irregularity of accumulation of 

 these absent members seems to be due rather to the set of currents than 

 to surface inequalities of the marl, reaching above and below water-level, 

 because the marl would always have formed a soft mass, the insoluble 

 part of which would have gone to form detrital beds formed by ex- 

 posure to denudation, and no rocks attributable to this origin are known 

 in the series. 



However this may be ; as in one place carboniferous limestone, and 

 in another tertiary clays and sandstones, rest upon the salt-marl, amid 

 such complicated disturbance too as is evidently present, it is difficult 

 to guess how far solution of the salt rock or slipping of the whole series 

 in consequence may have contributed to conceal the true succession of 

 the deposits. 



We have then the carboniferous as one of the oldest groups known 

 to have succeeded the salt-marl here ; followed by the trias, jura, eocene, 

 and lower tertiary sandstone formations, an alternation of hard and soft 

 rocks likely to break up irregularly under the exertion of such forces of 

 rending and pressure as were encountered ; and there are no facts to 

 show that any of these were unconformably deposited. 

 ( 252 ) 



