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



and trap-rocks. The facts here noticed leave scarcely a doubt that there is in this portion of 

 the area a stratified rock, possessing peculiar original characteristics : that it is at one place 

 saliferous, and at another calcareous, strongly suggests the question whether the saline quality 

 be not also one of its original, local peculiarities. So far as trap-rock can be taken as an 

 exponent of a metamorphosing agent, its influence should have been as potent at either 

 of the two last-mentioned localities as where the rock is saliferous. On the whole, I think 

 that the balance of evidence is in favour of the cotemporaneous origin of the salt. 



I have now to notice the region of the Dhaoladhar, in which we find 

 St' f Dl 1 dhar conditions in some important respects markedly 

 at Dhurmsala. different from anything described among the lower 



region of the Eastern Himalaya. The section already given of the 

 ridge west of the upper valley of the Ool is very similar to what 

 we shall find along the base of the range, up to the Eavee. North of 

 Soonsal, Dewal, and Lonode the narrow band of limestone, a quartzite 

 sandstone, and calcareous slates, which are also often carbonaceous and 

 with more or less of trappean rocks, appear to underlie the mica schists 

 and gneissose rocks of the lofty spurs from the Dhaoladhar. At Bundla 

 the trap-rock is again more ' abundant, and with numerous symptoms 

 of the saliferous rock. North of Nirwaneh the band of limestone 

 and pink shales with trap, outside the great schistose series, is still very 

 narrow. At Dhurmsala limestone is well seen, and its relation to the schist 

 series is more distinctly defined than usual. At the village of Bagsoo, in the 

 goro-e north-east of Dhurmsala, thin-bedded, blue, compact limestone has 

 a dip of 70° to the south-west, being also crushed and contorted. This is just 

 to the north of the sandstone ridge on which the station is built. There 

 is little or no trap. About forty yards north of the limestone the schist 

 series is seen, with a broken high dip to north. The dip in these fine, 

 greenish, micaceous schists becomes flatter and more steady in ascending 

 the spur. On approaching the great buttress of massive granitoid gneiss, 

 standing out from the main ridge of the Dhaoladhar, the dip again rises, 

 and thus the schists seem to pass under the more highly crystalline rocks. 

 There is little change in this rock up to the crest of the Dhaoladhar. 



