184 Mr. Verchére on the Geology of Kashmir, [No. 3, 
ance, suggestive of their having been baked, and:they weather in 
rounded bosses like many volcanic rocks. I have suggested that 
their amygdaloidal condition and their ‘‘ metamorphic weathering” 
may be accounted for by the hypothesis that hot ejecta of volcanoes, 
either hot water, steam, hot ashes or a current of lava, had found their 
way into a shallow sea and set it a-boiling. It might be said that 
these very impure calcareous muds might have had gases generated 
in their interior by the decomposition of organic matter or some other 
cause; but many layers which are much more feetid and were there- 
fore more likely to emit gases are not at all amygdaloidal, and besides, 
there is so much volcanic power manifested all over our tract of 
country, that it is more natural to invoke a little steam to boil mud 
with, than to look for less obvious hypotheses. But another reason 
in favour of volcanic metamorphism is, that these same white 
baked limestones have been observed in other localities, near Manus 
Bal in Kashmir and in the Kafir Kote mountain, in the Punjab, and 
in these localities they are disturbed by actions which appear to have 
taken place locally and to have affected these limestones much more 
than the rocks below them. The beds of Manus Bal will be de- 
scribed hereafter in these pages, and we shall be able to observe how 
faulted and twisted are the white limestones of that place. At the 
Kafir Kote there has been a similar local upheaval, and the disorder 
is very considerable. In this locality a felspathic sand, invaded by 
quartzite in tortuous branches, is the remains of the volcanic action 
which has taken place there, and the limestone, though much less 
marly than in Cashmir, is filled with geodes and veins of spar. I 
believe these actions to have been local and not very extensive; they 
had little effect on the Zeeawan bed which had, by the time they took 
place, become tolerably consolidated, and they merely fractured and 
pushed aside the nearest portion of the bed; but they acted power- 
fully on the yet soft and muddy Weean bed, curving it and twisting 
it in all sorts of manners and directions; and when these folds and 
twists were again disturbed, probably intensified and placed in new 
positions by the final upheaval of the Himalaya, they became what 
we see them now, viz. most incomprehensible doublings and reversings 
of strata. Let us also remember the beds which I mentioned as 
having been seen from the brow of the last spur of the Zebanwan 
