1843.] of the Punjauh and part of Afghanistan. 205 



Imbedded in it there are also enormous masses of red and brown iron 

 ore or hematite, which resisting the action of the weather better than 

 the limestone, stand out in bold relief. In many places the needle of 

 the compass is rendered quite useless, even at a considerable distance 

 from the rocks, owing to their being highly magnetic from the quantity 

 of iron which they contain. Resting upon the limestone, we have 

 sandstone, varying in colour from greyish white to dark reddish brown ; 

 in some places so soft as to crumble under the finger ; in others so hard 

 as to give sparks with steel. The compact dark variety whose colour is 

 owing to the peroxide of iron, abounds with teeth, bones, and coprolites 

 of enormous animals, judging from the size of the first ; but whether 

 they belong to saurians or sauroid fishes, we have not been able to deter- 

 mine from the imperfect nature of the specimens, but probably to the lat- 

 ter. In Cutch, a caudal vertebra, said by Messrs. Clift and Owen to belong 

 to a saurian has been found in strata, which appear to belong to the lias 

 or oolite period.* We broke up enormous slabs of red sandstone studded 

 with teeth, some of whose summits were quite flat, being worn down, 

 shewing that the animal to which they belonged had far advanced in 

 years. In the coprolites, teeth and scales occur, pointing out that their 

 habits were carnivorous. In England, in this formation, the remains of 

 two saurian genera pabeosaurus and thecodontosaurus have been 

 found,f and they are the most ancient examples of fossil reptiles yet 

 found in the British islands. In their organization, they are allied to 

 the iguana and monitor. In Germany, saurians have been met with in 

 the zechstein limestone, which is the oldest rock on the continent in 

 which these remains have been found ; they belong to the genera pro- 

 torosaurus, also allied to the monitors. It is, however, remarkable that 

 the sandstone in which the organic remains occur at Kalabagh is deeply 

 coloured with the peroxide of iron, and it is a well known fact, that 

 scarcely any are ever found in rocks where this metal is found to 

 abound ; thus we often find red and white sandstones alternating with 

 each other, but only the latter containing organic remains j and in Eng- 

 land and Scotland it is the grey and calcareous beds. Some exceptions to 

 this rule are met with as in Forfarshire, and Lord Greenock we think, 

 found fossil teeth and coprolites in a red sandstone in East Lothian. 



* Grant's Trans. Geological Society, 11. Sec. Vol. V. 



f See Proc. Geological Society, No. 45, Messrs. Riley and Stuchbury, as quoted 

 by Lyell. 



* 



