22 Dr. Verchere on the Geology of Kashmir , [No. 1, 



end of the Speen or Lowa G-ur. It appears to be identical, in fossils 

 and in lithological characters, to the limestone of Kashmir. Dr. A. 

 Fleming does not mention its ever resting on quartzite or volcanic ash, 

 but supposes on the contrary that it rests on the Saliferian formation, 

 which he, in consequence of this view, calls Devonian. Whatever 

 little of the carboniferous limestone of the Salt Range I have myself 

 seen, is too much disturbed to allow me to form an opinion ; I cer- 

 tainly never saw any quartzite underlying the limestone in the Salt 

 Range ; but such quartzite exists in the Rottah Roh, and it is evident 

 that the Rottah Roh carboniferous limestone, and that of the Salt 

 Range are one and the same sheet of deposit, broken and separated by 

 convulsions of a posterior age. This, however, does not prove much 

 either way. 



The long controversy about the age of the salt and gypsum in the 

 Alps bids fair to be repeated in the Punjab. The Saliferian of the 

 Salt Range has already been placed by successive observers in nearly 

 every formation from the Devonian to the Miocene ! In the Alps, geo- 

 logists appear to have once become desperate at the fight, and M. 

 Sismonda published in the Comptes rendu s de V Academie des Sciences 

 de Paris (Vol. III. p. 11%) the somewhat startling hypothesis that 

 " in the Alps the shells of the Lias lived at the same time as the 

 carboniferous plants"!!!... It is not a little curious resemblance 

 that in the Maurieune, in Savoy, (the great field of contention,) the 

 gypsum, quartzite, marl, &c, are much disturbed by local foldings and 

 bendings, and appear to be placed under the carboniferous rocks (terrain 

 houiller). Fortunately a thin, but very persistent and well-char- 

 acterised bed, the Infra-lias, has enabled the geologists who have 

 best studied this locality, to fix the position of the red marl, red and 

 green shale, quartzite, gypsum, &c, in the Trias, and to show that the 

 apparently inferior position of these Triassic layers was due to such 

 great disturbances and reversions of strata as one may reasonably 

 expect to have accompanied the surging up of mountains like the Alps. 

 Less fortunate or less industrious than they of Europe, we have not 

 yet found the Infra-lias in India, and we have not therefore got hold 

 of the thread which led so successfully the Swiss and French geologists 

 to a true understanding of the Alpine Saliferian. 



I wish that I could have determined satisfactorily the age of the 



