lvi Report of the Mineralogical Survey [No. 126*. 



short distance from the Pass above Surmal. It is generally covered 

 with an enormous coat of debris and of peat, but the rock is visible 

 in more than one place. It is gneiss, occasionally small granular, oc- 

 casionally with bent laminae, and resembling the passage into micaceous 

 schist. The dip is as often S. E. as N. E., nor did there appear to me 

 any clue by which I could trace the connection of their opposite dips, 

 which are many times repeated even in a very short distance. Beds of 

 hornblende rock are frequent ; this rock is very often quite amorphous, 

 and has but little of any appearance of a schistose structure. It occa- 

 sionally contains mica and even quartz, as well as felspar, and may thus 

 be said to be identical in composition with the syenites, but it never loses 

 the characteristic appearance of hornblende rock, and the above minerals 

 are always in small quantity. 



114. In the descent from the Kedrolo Pass to Kutar, the gneiss is lat- 

 terly found to lose its felspar, and in the neighbourhood of that village 

 it is an ordinary well-defined micaceous schist. From hence this latter 

 rock continues in the bed of the Nocor river, lying at so low an angle that 

 it is difficult to observe the dip or direction. I should have observed that 

 the outline of the great ridge and its ramifying branches, from which the 

 Kedrola Pass forms the descent, is peculiar. It is sharp and serrated, 

 while that of the mountains east of Kutar, and even the branches of the 

 former, as they fall in the scale of elevation, are observed to assume 

 smooth rounded outlines, with scarcely any sharp peaks or breaches. 

 But if the smooth ridge is seen to rise to any thing like the elevation of 

 the serrated ridges, it also becomes serrated like them, while again on 

 sinking, it takes the rounded form. This fact, combined with the low 

 degree of inclination which the strata bear, would seem to justify in in- 

 ferring the superposition of gneiss on micaceous schist, nor is there 

 any thing so unusual in the fact, however contrary to a once generally 

 received system, to occasion any hesitation in admitting the truth of it. 



115. In the bed of the Nowr river, besides fragments of the mica 

 slate, the rock in situ many large blocks are seen of gneiss of a type 

 which I did not observe any where in this quarter in situ. Judging how- 

 ever from the connections of this rock in other places, I would infer that 

 it must also be in abundance here, forming most probably those serrated 

 crests which crown the mica slate ridges. This rock may be called 

 a porphyritic gneiss. It is composed of rather a middling grained 



