PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED OR WRITTEN INFORMATION. 7 



not give the reasons for bis opinion, which, had so accurate an observer 

 seen the ground, would perhaps have been different. 



Oldham. — Dr. Oldham, Superintendent of the Geological Survey, 

 paid a hasty visit to the district in 1864, and in his memorandum 

 to Government on the Salt Range and parts of Bannii and Kohat 

 districts, mentioned the leading features of the quarries and the salt 

 trade. The paper was not, however, intended to extend to the geological 

 structure of the country or place of the salt series, and it will be seen 

 from the following pages that the system in vogue then has progressed 

 little towards improvement as regards the manner of working within the 

 nine succeeding years. 



Verchere. — Dr. Albert Verchere, in his paper on the geology of. 

 Kashmere, the Western Himalaya and Afghan mountains, likewise in the 

 Journal of the Asiatic Society (Nos. 2 and 3, 1866, and 1, 2, 3, 1867)., 

 mentions some of the Trans-Indus salt localities with more reference to 

 the geological age of the associated rocks. His description, however, of 

 the Bahadur Khel exposure, while in one or two points correct, is likely 

 to mislead. The thickness of the salt is vastly more than 50 feet. The 

 red marl (». e., red clay zone) he misplaces below the gypsum ; the dark 

 brown sandstone at the base of the nummulitic rocks may belong to the 

 red group, otherwise it is absent here, and although the place was 

 searched for anything to represent the Jurassic rocks coloured there upon 

 his map, nummulitic limestones only were seen, and every section in the 

 neighbourhood increased the conviction that the salt and gypsum series 

 was directly succeeded by the nummulitic rocks, if not a part thereof. 



Another, a manuscript " note on the geological formation of hills in 

 the district of Bannu and its neighbourhood'''' (1869 by the same author) 

 has been met with. 



In this there is a more extended reference to the part of the Kohat 

 district under notice, but the rocks are mentioned (not always correctly) 

 as if from the notes of a very occasional observer. Thus one would be 

 led to infer that there were no nummulitic rocks between Lachee (Lachi) 

 and Bahadur Khel, and that red marls of triassic age with small lenti- 



( in ) 



