IN THE EASTERN SALT RANGE, PUNJAB. 349 



lower groups from one another, where so many changes in the 

 whole series take place. 



Regarding the earlier portions of the general series, every thing 

 connected with its oldest subdivision, the saline marl, salt, and 

 gypsum-group, points to conditions of heat and evaporation ; from 

 these the change to a period of glacial severity, unaccompanied by 

 a long interval marked by disturbance, would, according to the new 

 theory, in some parts of the Salt-Range series, be remarkably abrupt ; 

 and it would seem more probable, from the so-called evidences of 

 glaciation occurring only where there are records of rapid motion 

 transporting coarse materials, that the glacial regions were re- 

 moved vertically or horizontally, or both, by some considerable space 

 from the present site of the boulder-accumulations. 



Admitting that the Conularia- pebhles have been transported*, 

 there is no great difficulty in supposing gradual alteration of condi- 

 tions and alternation of events, as the natural causes operated, which 

 could lead to the removal of glaciated boulders, and later could 

 have transported fossiliferous pebbles or even nodules, each and 

 both to be enclosed at different stages in the same deposits. 



A prominent consideration regarding the layer with Conularice 

 is — Whence came the pebbles enclosing the fossils ? Their number 

 and the extensive area occupied by the layer seem to indicate 

 no very distant source, and the pale colour of the pebbles, of 

 itself, seems to point towards the Magnesian Sandstone as the 

 original site. The restricted character of the fossils as to their 

 variety, and their attributed unity of age, may indicate that all 

 came from a comparatively narrow zone or layer, the possibly local 

 exposure of which to denudation might result from accident con- 

 nected with the discordance noticed recently by Mr. Oldham (I. c). 

 The chief fact bearing against this supposition, so far as I am 

 aware, is that many unavailing searches have been made for fossils 

 in the Magnesian-Sandstone group ; but this does not preclude the 

 possibility of their occurrence. 



Another consideration is that more than one previous observer 

 has raised the question as to what became of the continuation of 

 the Salt-Eange series beyond its present southerly scarp. Frac- 

 tures along a main line of fissure, coincident with this scarp, 

 have been suggested ; and dislocation of the kind, though im- 

 possible to trace, might have displaced beds from which the Conu- 

 larice had been previously derived. At all events it is evident 

 that there was formerly, in the vicinity of the Salt Range, a 

 permanent source of foreign metamorphic materials, which became 

 mingled with its ordinary deposits ; and it does not seem to be a 

 strained or very unlikely supposition, that the rocks of this old 

 metamorphic region may have supported others, amongst which the 

 original site of the Conularice and associated fossils was included — 

 a region whence not alone the glaciated blocks, but all the rest 

 of the Palaeozoic, Mesozoic, and perhaps some of the earliest 

 Kainozoic sediments of the Salt Range were derived. 



* As Dr. Warth, Mr. R. Oldham, and myself maintain. 



