1S77.] U 



II. — Note on the preceding paper. — By H. B. Medlicott, Esq., 

 Superintendent of the Geological Survey of India. 

 (Received Jan. 15 ; — Read Jan. 1 7th, 1877.) 

 Mr. Campbell has kindly permitted me to add a few words to Lis 

 communication, to bring out a small residuum of difference that remains 

 between us upon the question of a former greater extension of ice action 

 in the Himalayas. On the wider question of the Ice Cap, I would only 

 say that I have not understood that speculation as dispensing with local 

 centres of accumulation and dispersion, as requiring the polar ice to have 

 poured over the Himalayas. On the smaller question too, Mr. Campbell 

 has taken up the comparatively easy task of confuting the most extreme 

 opinion. Although there is no mention of names, it is plain that the paper 

 just read is a refutation of Mr. Theobald's Ancient Glaciers of the Kangra 

 District, with a copy of which I had lured Mr. Campbell into visiting 

 that region. I had thought indeed that I had myself said all that was 

 called for in answer to Mr. Theobald, by pointing out that his so called 

 moraines were only ridges of erosion out of a diluvial deposit that must 

 once ha v^e filled the whole valley (Eec. Geol. Survey, Vol. IX, p. 56) ; Mr. 

 Campbell has, however, saved us any further trouble on that score by re- 

 hearsing all the well-known signs and tokens that must be left by a heavy 

 glacier, and finding them wanting. In this he has entirely confirmed my 

 own observations. 



I was the first (fourteen years ago, Mem. Geol. Survey, Vol. Ill, 

 p. 155) to bring to notice the big stones of the Kangra valley as probably 

 due to ice. I would beg leave to quote the few words I gave to the subject : 

 '' The most interesting of these deposits is that in which large erratic 

 blocks occur so abundantly along the base of the Dhaoladhar. It first 

 shows itself on the east, about Haurbaug, and is nowhere more strikingly 

 seen than along the steep inner slopes of the duns east of Dhurmsala, where 

 the huge blocks are thickly scattered over the surface. In viewing this 

 dejiosit as the result of glacial action, I base my opinion chiefly upon the 

 size of the blocks (I measured one twenty-five feet by eighteen, by ten) 

 and upon some peculiarities of distribution. An eye more practised than 

 mine in glacial 23henomena might detect more direct evidence, but it cer- 

 tainly is not well-marked, and it is easy to account for the subsequent 

 removal of all such traces of glacial action in such a position as this. The 

 blocks occur at a present elevation so low as 3,000 feet above the sea-level, 

 and they are found through fully a thousand feet in height. They are 

 almost exclusively composed of the granitoid gneiss of the central mass of 

 the Dhaoladhar, from which their area of distribution is separated by a 



