1866. ] the Western Himdlaya and Afghan Mountains. T11 
limestone, and these again by sandstone. No fossils have yet been dis- 
covered in either the limestone or the sandstone, and the age of these 
strata must therefore remain unknown for the present. Near Jellalabad 
beds of gneissoid felstone appear. This rock is quarried to make hand- 
mills which are brought down by the Povindahs and sold in Peshawur 
and the Derajat. These hand-mills are made of a coarse trachyte which 
has begun to effect a partial separation of minerals, and these minerals 
are arranged in streaks of white, granular felspar, greyish-blue 
felspar, with here and there a grain of augite. It is, therefore, again 
one of the varieties of felstone seen at Baramoola, and provably the 
same gneissoid variety quarried in Yusufzaie. 
15.—By reference to the map we observe that the Pir Punjal chain 
is the first great parallel of the Himalaya, between the long. 73° 30’ 
and 76° H. It isa great chain, forming a belt of high mountains 
between the miocene districts of Jummoo, Rajaori, Poonch and O11 
and the Kashmir valley, and at both ends of this great chain an 
immense accumulation of porphyries and other volcanic rocks, rising 
to tremendous heights, and covering some thousand square miles of 
country, are placed like two bastions at the extremities of a centric 
wall. What rocks then compose the connecting chain, the Pir 
Punjal? The reader will easily conceive how vexed I am that I was 
prevented visiting this range, more especially as the information 
I obtained from travellers is most conflicting and unsatisfactory. Mr. 
L. Drew, who has traversed the chain three or four times, was especially 
struck with the enormous development of a great slate bar of un- 
known age. We shall see in the next chapter, how very thick and 
extensive courses of slate are interstratified with beds of trachyte, 
ash and agglomerate, in the mountains bounding the Kashmir valley 
to the North. Thgse slates are completely devoid of fossils, but as 
I hope to be able to fix the age of the volcanic rocks with which 
they are interbedded and contemporaneous, we had better reserve 
the discussion of their age until after the examination of the fossili- 
ferous strata of Kashmir. 
But the slates form only a band or bar in the Pir Punjal chain, 
and not the whole of it. I believe, that the remainder of the rocks. 
of this range are mostly volcanic ash, felstone and agglomerates. A 
friend of mine and a very trustworthy observer, in the following passage 
