86 Dr. Verchere on the Geology of Kashmir, [No. 2, 



stratified arrangement of these ejected materials, especially those which 

 are ejected in a loose and fragmentary condition, the amygdaloidal 

 nature of nearly all the ash-rocks and some of the slates, and the 

 existence of these slates interstratified with the volcanic rocks, justify 

 the idea that some of the volcanoes were islands and others subaqueous 

 craters, in a sea of moderate depth, and it requires no great effort of 

 the mind to picture to ourselves an archipelago of fire-emitting islands 

 in the Silurian sea. 



At what time the volcanoes first out broke out, it is not at present 

 possible to determine ; they appear to have subsided at the beginning 

 of the Carboniferous epoch ; and though phenomena related to volcanic 

 power, in the most general acceptance of that term, were not wanting 

 during and after the Carboniferous epoch, yet it is certain, as far as 

 we at present know, that no regular volcano ever existed in the 

 western Himalaya after the great Silurian volcanoes had become 

 extinct. 



85. It has been remarked in many parts of the world that, when a 

 volanic district is, after the extinction of all craters, so disturbed that 

 fissures are formed in the crust of the earth, these fissures do not pass 

 through the old volcanic accumulations, but rather at a little distance 

 from them. This has been explained by supposing that the masses of 

 porphyry, trachyte and other once melted rocks,which have been ejected 

 in the original volcanic fissures and amongst the rocks near this fissure, 

 have so much strengthened the crust of the earth in the site of that 

 fissure, that a new fracture takes place anywhere rather than across or 

 along the old crack. If instead of one old crack we have many parallel 

 cracks, the new fissures will then naturally take a direction parallel to 

 the old fissures and will be situated between them. This has been the 

 case in the Himalayas, and the great lines of fracture which were formed 

 at the last upheaval, are none of them along the catenated volcanic 

 chains, but between and parallel to these chains. But the catenated 

 chains or lines of linear Silurian volcanoes determined the direction of 

 the great lines of fracture which were formed at the last upheaval. We 

 see therefore in the Himalayas great lines of fracture running N. "W. and 

 S. E., these fractures present a downthrow on the S. W. and the 

 beds of rocks north-east of them form the great parallel chains of the 

 Himalaya. The general dip of all these chains, and indeed of all the 



