28 SUB-HIMALAYAN ROCKS OF N. W. INDIA. [CHAP. II. 



basin to the Blini, the slates are throughout more or less carbonaceous, 

 yet on the road which winds along the low watershed connecting the two 

 hills, over rocks, all of which, so far as I can make out, must be the actual 

 continuation of some of those noted in the above sections, this carbona- 

 ceous character totally disappears. The beds in the valley on either side 

 must be at least as low in the series as those on the watershed, which 

 are at an elevation of some 3 or 400 feet higher on the same 

 strike. At many points on the watershed the rocks have been cut into 

 for the road-way to a depth of ten or fifteen feet, but without showing 

 any difference. Excepting in this one respect of colour, and the very 

 small amount of carbon that produces it, the beds of the watershed are 

 readily identifiable with the dark-coloured, carbonaceous rocks to which 

 we have just alluded. Similar cases on a smaller scale may be noticed on 

 individual spurs. In many instances a transition is traceable by the 

 gradual disappearance of this black or colouring ingredient. Frequently 

 too, in such positions a calcined appearance is very marked, as if the 

 carbon had been abstracted by some rapid process of combustion. This 

 calcined appearance is often seen at a distance from the immediate prox- 

 imity of any black rocks, but, as a rule, there is not even this slight evi- 

 dence (if it can be considered any) of the carbonaceous character having 

 formerly existed in beds which I am inclined to suppose once possessed it. 

 Although I have not succeeded in finding a single vegetable impres- 

 sion in these black rocks, I can hardly think that 

 Carbonaceous element. . 



the carbonaceous ingredient can be other than 



cotemporaneous ; for we find it characteristically displayed over so large 

 an area, at such great distances (as will be frequently noticed in the fol- 

 lowing pages), always in beds of the same stamp, and which are thus 

 mutually identifiable, as well as by analogy of position, and by more or 

 less continuous connection. The further inference becomes then very 

 strono- that an element so widely spread at the time of original deposition 

 could not have been very locally absent, as has just been described in the 



