480 Notes of a trip from Simla to the Spiti Valley. [No. 4, 



Notes of a trip from Simla to the Spiti Valley and Chomoriri 

 (Tshomoriri) Lahe during the months of July, August and Septem- 

 ber, 1861. — By W. Theobald, Esq., Jnr., 



The object for which the present trip was undertaken, was to 

 acquire some definite information regarding the interesting fossili- 

 ferous deposits, both of Palaeozoic and Mesozoic age, known to exist 

 in the Spiti valley and the higher Himalayas, to ascertain as far as a 

 cursory examination would permit, their extent, and relations to the 

 older groups in contact with them, and to collect such a series of 

 fossils from them, as should facilitate the determination of their age 

 in the geological scale, and thereby afford a key for the approximate 

 determination of the age of those older groups, in which fossils are 

 either rare or altogether wanting. These objects have, I trust, been 

 to some extent accomplished, though I shall not now touch on geo- 

 logical questions, which, with the result of the examination of the fossil 

 collections, will appear elsewhere at some future period. In the mean- 

 while I have put together a few notes of a general character, in hopes 

 that they may prove of some interest or service to any one about to 

 travel over the same ground. 



I may, in the present place, perhaps be expected to allude to two 

 papers by Capt. Thomas Hutton, entitled " Journal of a Trip through 

 Kunawar, Hungrung and Spiti, in Vols. VIII, and IX, of the Asiatic 

 Society's Journal for 1839 and 1840," and a " Geological Report on the 

 valhy of the Spiti and of the route from Kotghur, in Vol. X, of 184 J ." 



Of the first of these, I have little to remark ; but, as regards the 

 second, I must deny the applicability of the term geological to such 

 speculations as it presents. Capt. Hutton has, in fact, fallen into 

 the not uncommon error of confounding cosmogony with geology, 

 although they have no more in common than the alchemy of the 

 Middle Ages possesses with the science of modern chemistry. To 

 attempt the serious refutation of some of the views of Capt. Hutton, 

 on subjects connected with geology, would be almost as hopeless, 

 not to say absurd, as for a surgeon to discuss the treatment of 

 Aneurism with a man who denied the circulation of the blood ; 

 and I must, therefore, excuse myself from entering at any length 

 on the merits of the views of cosmogony and creation set forth 

 in the above paper : but they are, I fully believe, as ingenious as 



