GEOLOGY OP THE UPPER PUNJAB, 355 



Range is closely associated with the gypsum and salt beds of this 

 saline series as intercalated lenticular masses of several feet in 

 thickness. The rock is a purple volcanic one rendered porphyrinic* 

 by abundant minute acicular crystals of a mineral resembling 

 actinolite. A paler purple ashy-looking layer accompanies it : and 

 though the exposures are of limited extent, the association recalls 

 the occurrence of trachytes and dolerites with the roek-salt of 

 Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf f. 



The dolomite layers in the salt-marl sometimes exhibit very 

 perfect casts of what are known as " hopper crystals " of salt ; but 

 no trace of a fossil has been found in the whole saline series. 



The purple-sandstone group overlying the salt-marl, gypsum, and 

 salt is but slightly, if at all, saline, and is as unfossiliferous as the 

 rocks below. 



The finer beds of the Himalayan slaty region may have been 

 accumulating in a deep sea the shore of which lay in the direction 

 of the place occupied by the early Salt-range deposits ; for there are 

 indications of the existence of land towards peninsular India to the 

 southward, in the crystalline boulders of the dark earthy conglo- 

 merates replacing the purple sandstone in western parts of the 

 range. These crystalline boulders not being of the same kinds as 

 the Himalayan detritus, it is a fair conjecture that they came from 

 another direction ; and the nearest rocks to the Salt Range exposed 

 to the southward, those of the Karana hills, about 40 miles distant, 

 consist of grey, ripple-marked and siliceous slate, brown, ferruginous 

 quartzose sandstone, and greenish quartzite J, all such as might 

 occur near more crystalline rocks. 



There may be larger signs of volcanic agency concealed, and this 

 force might have operated towards producing some local conditions 

 at the place where the salt was deposited ; all such traces are, 

 however, absent in the other Salt region of the country. 



Organic traces appear to be very rare in these older rocks, and 

 limited, so far as known, to the Silurian shells in the Salt Range, 

 and possibly the Carbonaceous layers of the Kiol group in the Pfr 

 Panjal. 



8. Following the Silurian zone of the Salt Range with perfect 

 conformity is a strongly marked belt of siliceous and highly magne- 

 sian rocks, the " Magnesian Sandstone group " (No. 5). It is only 

 developed in the eastern part of the region, apparently on a some- 

 what lower horizon than another group of thick sandstones and red 

 or lavender clays (No. 6) in greatest force about the middle of the 

 range, and there underlying the Carboniferous formation. 



These groups are both unfossiliferous ; they have no representa- 

 tives in the outer Himalayan hills that I know of, unless an equi- 

 valent for one or both be found in the unfossiliferous siliceous 

 dolomite and red sandstones, shales, and haematites of the infra- 



* In the sense of containing separated crystals. 

 t Records G-eol. Surv. Ind. vol. v. p. 42. 



| Dr. Fleming's and Mr. Theobald's papers, Joum. Asiat. Soc. Beiig. vol. xxii, 

 &c. 



