FLEMING ON THE SALT RANGE OF THE PUNJAUB. 197 



the Pubbee Hills on which the Seikh army encamped after the 

 battle of Chillianwala. Dr. A. Fleming does not agree with 

 Major Vicary in regarding the Pind Dadun Khan salt as belonging 

 to these tertiary sands, &c. ; though he thinks it probable that the 

 Trans-Indus salt is found in some similar strata. Indeed, the au- 

 thor feels assured that the salt-deposits of the Punjaub Salt 

 Range* have nothing whatever to do with the tertiary strata between 

 Rotas and the Indus, described by Major Vicary, and in which 

 Major Vicary found abundance of fossil bones. The quantity of 

 calcareous tufa spread in irregular deposits over the surface of the 

 low hills formed of these tertiary sands is very remarkable. Dr. A. 

 Fleming has not found in them any fossil shells, but only the mid- 

 rib of the leaf of a Palm, and bits of lignite, probably the remains of 

 some coniferous tree. 



These tertiaries Dr. A. Fleming considers to be probably identical 

 with the ossiferous beds of the Siwaliks, as they abound with frag- 

 mentary mammalian bones, which are chiefly confined to argillaceous 

 grits. The author obtained a very large bone in a similar grit in 

 sandstones which flank the Peer Punjal Range, fully 5000 feet above 

 the sea. 



The thickness of these younger tertiaries is very great, as is their 

 extent likewise. They form a continuous sheet from Jelum up to 

 Rawal Pindee, north of the Salt Range, and from Rawal Pindee up 

 to Ooree on the Cashmeer River, where the author has seen them 

 in connection with a highly quartzose mica-slate, which forms the 

 central portion of the Peer Punjal. In a westerly direction they 

 extend up to Cabul and all along the Indus below Kalabagh. 



"With regard to the probable origin of the Salt-marl, the author 

 says, — " I am inclined to consider the saliferous rocks in the Salt 

 Range of the Punjaub as being of an eruptive character — 1. Be- 

 cause it presents no traces, or at most such as are very imperfect, 

 of stratification. 2. Because it contains angular masses of other 

 rocks of the Salt Range. 3. Because the gypsum and salt are 

 for the most part found in large and small masses at irregular 

 depths in the marl, being evidently portions of what originally has 

 been a regular bed. 4. The gypsum is in some cases reduced to a 

 white powdery rock, as if it were burned, and in and on the surface 

 of the marl are formed fragments of a trappean rock, sometimes 

 containing nests of talc, which I believe to be altered sandstone or 

 clay. This trappean rock I have found nowhere in a dyke or bed, 

 only in fragments in the marl, or in small detached lumps on its 

 surface. 5. The red sandstone near the salt-marl is very much 

 rent and broken, and where the salt-marl crops out there is a most 

 extraordinary disturbance in the strata superior to it. It very often 

 appears in valleys, filling these up, in a manner, while the strata dip 

 from either side, thus (see fig. 3) : 



* Now yielding (May 1851) government 14 lacs of rupees (£140,000) an- 

 nually. 



