GEOLOGY OP THE UPPER PUNJAB. 369 



been also found near the Jhelum, and in a few other places among 

 the next newer beds (Lower Siwalik). The localities of the greater 

 quantities of the first-mentioned fossil wood may indicate the 

 existence, at an early part of the period during which the detrital 

 beds were formed, of a considerable land area to the south and 

 south-west of the plateau ; while the newer carbonized trees would 

 show that land, whether it was forest-land or not, existed in the 

 vicinity later on, though probably not actually within the ground 

 now occupied by the Siwalik rocks. 



It is to the close of this great Tertiary period that the disturbance 

 which produced the neighbouring parts of the Himalayan and the 

 Salt-Range mountains is usually referred. The whole geological 

 series, up to the newest Tertiary deposits, have undergone lateral 

 compression with contortion, and the general conformity of all in 

 the Salt-Range region shows that this contortion must date from a 

 period succeeding that of the most recent of the disturbed rocks. 



Minor disturbances may have influenced the distribution and 

 given the local character to many of the formations, but did not 

 produce the folding or bending which affects the whole. 



In the northern part of the district, however, one can go further 

 and say that previous disturbance and elevation had taken place, 

 causing a marked break between the Silurian and Triassic periods ; 

 the Triassic and infra-Trias sic rocks, though themselves partaking 

 of the more recently communicated inclination and curvature, were 

 deposited upon the upturned and denuded edges of the slates*. 



Over that part of the frontier country which includes the trans - 

 Indus salt region, the effects of the more recent disturbance have 

 been intensely marked ; this is probably owing to the yielding or 

 softer nature of the gypsum and earthy beds associated with the 

 salt now occupying the interiors of anticlinal ellipsoids of hard 

 Nummulitic limestone and Murree beds. These anticlinals are so 

 compressed and disturbed at points below the denuded crowns of 

 the arches that inversion is the rule and not the exception. 



The part of the Rawal-Pindi plateau lying south of the Svan River 

 is the least disturbed area in the whole district, this valley coinciding 

 with a large open synclinal hollow, within which rest the higher 

 beds of the Tertiary series. 



Faults connected with the same disturbance are prevalent in many 

 parts of the country, in the Salt Range, trans-Indus, and along the 

 northern side of the Pindi plateau, particularly in the vicinity of the 

 abnormal junction between the older Tertiary sandstones and the 

 limestone rocks of the outer Himalayan hills. 



* I can find no record of a similar unconformity or disturbance of the 

 slates &c. in the Simla area before the deposition of the supposed Triassic 

 Krol beds. Hence if the Krol be Trias, and conformable to the rocks below, 

 there must have been local disturbance and elevation in this region of the 

 Himalayan chain while the Krol portion of the Simla area was yet undisturbed 

 Triassic (or perhaps older) sea-bottom. 



