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



These inferior oolitic beds are capped by dark coloured shales 

 containing belemnites and ammonites, and referred by Professor 

 E. Forbes to the age of the Oxford clay. These shales are there- 

 fore the representatives of the several Jurassic beds we have already 

 seen in several parts of the Himalaya and of the Punjab. 



The oolitic beds are covered by grits, shales and limestone of 

 unknown age, and finally by the great horizontal bed of what 

 Colonel Strachey considers to be miocene (Siwalik) sandstones and 

 conglomerates. I have said before that the identity of these sand- 

 stones, grits and conglomerates to the Siwalik formation is far from 

 established, and that thei'e are more reasons for considering them 

 pleistocene, than for assuming them to be coeval with the deposition 

 of the Sub-Himalayan tertiaries. 



77. The Kilas Chain is of less elevation than the Ser and Mer, 

 and its peaks are neither so numerous, nor so well known or so re- 

 markable for their enormous mantles of snow. The principal sum- 

 mit is the Kailas (or Tise) peak, which rises to 22,000 feet above 

 the sea, in longitude 81° 18', and is therefore far to the S. E. of our 

 Western Himalaya. As it is, however, the only well known peak of 

 the Chain, I have called the whole chain from its name. 



The Kilas chain begins near Mount Haramash, N. of Astor and 

 N. W. of Baltistan, and is traversed near Skardo by the Shigar river 

 which cuts a passage across the range. The summit, Mashkulla, 

 (16,919) towers over the alluvial plain of Skardo, Shigar and Kuardo. 

 This mountain is mostly granite ; its spurs show a great deal of 

 metamorphic slate at a high angle of dip ; and the little hill close to 

 SkarTLo, evidently an off-shoot of the Mashkulla, is composed of an 

 imperfect shist. All along the left bank of the Shigar river, schists 

 of various sorts, especially mica-schists, and micaceous slates, together 

 with metamorphic marbles, form the great wall of mountains that 

 bound the Shigar valley to the N. E. Following the road which 

 leads from Shigar to the Thale valley, by the Thale la (pass) Captain 

 G. Austen discovered some beds of limestone, resting on the mica- 

 slate, and I have coloured that bed of limestone Silurian in the Map. 

 My reason for believing it to be Silurian is its proximity to 

 limestone beds of similar appearance and position at the Mashabroom, 

 and there, I believe, decidedly Silurian ; and also the fact that the 



