182 FAUNA ANTIQUA SIVALENSIS. 



If it is admitted that there are good grounds for the be- 

 lief that the plain of the Hioondes has been elevated several 

 thousand feet within a late period, it is necessary that we 

 should consider what further consequences are involved in the 

 supposition, and it will be evident that the entire line of 

 mountains from the Lake Manasarovara to the southern bend 

 of the Indus near Gilgit, in the parallel of Attock, must 

 have partaken in the movement. For as the course of rivers 

 from Manasarovara is due west, through a long intramontane 

 tract, had the Hioondes been 7,000 feet lower than it is now, 

 and the western prolongations of the river beds not been 

 proportionally depressed, the waters would have been held 

 up, and we should have traces of vast lacustrine formations 

 somewhere along the course of the Sutlej and Indus in 

 Ladakh, which, so far as our information at present goes, 

 does not appear to be the case. But as the great water-head 

 of the western and eastern drainage of the Himalayahs is in 

 the neighbourhood of Manasarovara, it is quite philosophical 

 to imagine that the centre and greatest force of the upheave- 

 ment was at the culminating point, and gradually decreased 

 westward. 



That upheavement of the southern face of the Himalayahs 

 was in this manner is almost susceptible of direct proof. The 

 Sewalik hills run west skirting the foot of the Himalayahs, 

 beyond the western banks of the Jhelum ; and the character- 

 istic Sewalik fossils have been dug out of the strata between 

 the Jhelum and Chenab, near Bimber, where they exist in 

 abundance; they are also found between the Ganges and 

 Gogra, and it is almost certain that the formation extends 

 at least as far as the Gogra, giving a protraction in length of 

 270 miles, between the Jhelum and the Gogra. The greatest 

 height of the fossiliferous strata is between the Jumna and 

 Ganges, the elevation diminishiug westward. It is, therefore, 

 a matter for inference that the greatest force of the upheave- 

 ments was at the culminating point, and was feebler as it 

 extended westward. 



It is a matter of much interest to determine whether these 

 upheavements of the northern and southern faces were con- 

 temporaneous events. There do not appear any good grounds 

 for coming to a satisfactory opinion on the subject, but there 

 can be very little doubt that they belonged to the same 

 geological era. 



With these undoubted proofs (in the Sewalik hills) before us 

 of comparatively late uprisings of the Ilimalayah moimtains, 

 it naturally occtirs to the mind to mquire if the chain has 

 been in a state of quiescence, as far as level is concerned, 

 since the historical period, and if it is so in our own times. 



