GEOLOGY OF THE UPPEK PUNJAB. 359 



Limestones form the largest part of these Triassic deposits over 

 the northern onter Himalayan area ; dolomites or dolomitic beds 

 are common, and earthy or sandy layers very subordinate, the whole 

 forming a series of great thickness. 



At Sir Ban, conformably succeeding the infra-Triassic siliceous 

 dolomites and quartz-breccias &c, are other dolomites with quartz 

 laminae, dark and paler, thin, hard limestones, and towards the top 

 of the group slaty shale and sandstones*. In these beds there are 

 numerous Triassic fossils, among them, in the lower part, Dicero- 

 cardium and Megalodon, higher up Nerinoea &c. I have found in 

 another part of the district, also (near Hassan Abdal), Dicerocardium- 

 limestone resting directly on the tilted edges of the slates without 

 the intervention of the infra-Triassic group. It is one of the most 

 marked rocks in the northern series, crowded with sections of the 

 fossils. Masses of thin-bedded limestone, more like that with 

 Nerinoea at Sir Ban, and containing here and there small Gastropods 

 and Echinoderms, are seen in nearly all the other exposures of the 

 Mesozoic rocks marked on this northern part of the map. 



Amongst such thin-bedded limestones south-west from Hassan 

 Abdal I found a bed of limestone conglomerate enclosing rounded 

 lumps of a yellowish limestone with corals, showing that denudation 

 of some adjacent limestone tract was then going on, probably con- 

 nected with the elevation which produced the unconformity at Sir 

 Ban and Hassan Abdal. 



Other representatives of these Himalayan Triassic beds, or at 

 least rocks provisionally so considered, occur in the Kashmir terri- 

 tory on the flanks of the Kyjenag and Pir-Panjal mountains ; they 

 consist of limestones and red and green magnesian schists under- 

 lying highly metamorphic slates and quartzites. All are usually 

 quite unfossiliferous. I have only seen these rocks near Uri (Ooree) 

 on the upper Jhelum or Yedusta river. I could find nothing de- 

 finitely organic amongst them except some little Gastropod-sections 

 in slabs which I obtained from the north side of the river. I thought 

 at the time from their position that they represented the Nummu- 

 litic group of the northern edge of the Bawal Pindi plateau, and 

 observed a strong resemblance, in some of the limestones, to the 

 Triassic beds of the hills near Murree, to which formation they have 

 since been doubtfully referred. 



Between the Jhelum and the Indus I know of no similar associa- 

 tion of metamorphic rocks with and overlying the Trias. As here, 

 the Carboniferous group is equally absent at the base of the Dicero- 

 carclium-limestone of Hassan Abdal ; and if these be really Triassic 

 rocks at Ooree, and not some of the Kiol limestones &c. of Silurian 

 age, complete inversion may account for their position t. 



* "G-eology of Mount Sir Ban," Waagen and Wynne, Meins. Geol. Surv. 

 Ind. vol. ix. p. 331. This hill presents an epitome of much of the geology of 

 the local Himalayan area. 



t As suggested by Mr. Lydekker, Pir-Panjal paper, cited above. The super- 

 position of metamorphic upon unmetamorphosed rocks has been widely observed 

 in the Himalayan mountains (see Memoirs GeoL Surv. Ind. vol. iii. and vol, xi, 

 pt.l). 



