224 



PEOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



In descending a slope of the Karewah Hills, near Manganwar, I 

 came upon wliat seemed to me to be both curious and interesting in 

 many ways, more particularly as showing the manner and extent to 

 which the surface of this formation (the lacustrine deposit forming 

 the Karewahs) has been lowered and reduced. The sketch, fig. 4, 



Fig. 4. — Perched Block, on a pillar of clay, on the side of the 

 Karewah Hills, near Manganwar. 



which will describe it better than words, represents an enormous 

 block of stone (of the kind of igneous rock to be met with in the 

 higher range) resting on a column of hard clay, about 8 feet in 

 height. The clay, with pieces of rock, mostly angular, is the same 

 with that which forms the mass of these Karewah Hills, and all 

 the materials of which hills have been washed down from the higher 

 ranges above them. 



The lowering of the surface, except when it was protected by 

 a block of stone, must have been owing to heavy vertical rain-falls ; 

 nothing else could have left rocks so perched and isolated. This 

 process is not going on now. The surface of the soil is protected by 

 a covering of vegetation (Deodars) ; and the particular block here 

 represented must have been in its present position for an enormous 

 length of time, as a tall Deodar has grown up alongside, so that 

 the block seems to rest against it*. 



" Karewah " is the Kashmere name for these low alluvial hills, 

 some of them 200 feet in height, and very steep, with small streams 

 (not so large as ours at Clulworth) bubbling along the valleys, which 

 here and there open out to 300 yards or so in width ; at these spots 



* Mr. Vigne notices what I fancy must be the same tiling (see his work, p. 285, 

 vol. i.) : — " The valley of the Gm-ys contains a great mass of alluvium at its north 

 end, and in that of Iskard there is a vast quantity of muddy deposits worn into 

 banks, hollows, and pinnacles." 



