IN THE EASTERN SALT RANGE, PUNJAB. 343 



In opposition to his first-formed conviction to the contrary, Dr, 

 Waagen advances, only : — 



1. That the (so-called) concretions occur regularly and plentifully 



in a thin layer at the top of, and not throughout, a whole thick 

 boulder-bed. 



2. That the thin layer has a regular constant horizontal distri- 



bution over more than ten square miles. 



3. That its fauna is a very uniform one, pointing distinctly to a 



single geological horizon, no mixture of foreign forms occur- 

 ing, as a presumed necessary result if the fossils were not 

 in situ. 



I cannot pretend to any precise recollection of this particular thin 

 layer at the top of the Olive-group Boulder-beds, though the pebbles 

 from it sent me by Dr. Warth seem familiar. ' Both concretionary 

 and conglomeratic beds are common enough in the neighbourhood, 

 and it would not serve any useful end were I to attempt to draw 

 the exact line between a memory and what can be so- easily 

 imagined *. But I have ample evidence of a better kind to con- 

 trast with Dr. Waagen's view, and with the three reasons he has 

 given as above condensed. Dr. Warth, who has doubtless most 

 carefully considered all the appearances presented by the layer and 

 its connents, favours me with conclusions arrived at on the spot. 

 Under the date December 1st, 1885, at a time when these pebbles 

 had been already spoken of as concretions, he wrote from Bid, Eastern 

 Salt Range, thus :— " Prom Choah-Saidun-Shah to Makrach 1 have 

 found the thin conglomerate bank, with the pebbles which enclose 

 Conularias and two or three other shells, absolutely uninterrupted 

 in the ' Olive Series ' (upper portion). I send you a single Conu- 

 laria which was found in a rounded-off state in the conglomerate. 

 It is evident that the Coniilarice have not become fossils on the spot, 

 but have been brought from a distant mountain as pebbles ; but how 

 these were distributed over such a large area in such a thin layer is 

 verj^ extraordinary " t. 



The single specimen here referred to has a label in Dr. Warth's 

 writing saying he took it "in its present state from the face of the 

 bed." It is now in the geological collection of Trinity College, 

 Dublin, and no one who inspects it can doubt the accuracy of 

 Dr. "Warth's view that this rolled fossil was not in situ in the posi- 

 tion in which he found it. In the same packet I found another 

 rolled Conularia, so much abraded that scarcely anything remains 

 except the general indication of its tapering form and rhomboidal 

 section. Nor did the other specimens sent containing Conularioe 



* I have looked over some of my old field-notes of February 1870, and they 

 only confirm the opinions I have always held as to the inter-relations of the 

 Eastern Salt-Eange groups. 



t From the map I constructed in the field, this area may have been 5 miles 

 by 2 in its general form, or rather longer and more narrow, but it is not more 

 closely defined by Dr. Warth than in the quotation. 



Q.'j.G.S. No. 167. 2 b 



