2 MIDDLEMISS: PHYSICAL GEOLOGY OF SUB-HIMALAYA, 



work is to be brought into a form suitable to the requirements of 

 modern scientific thought ; it will take a considerable time to collect 

 the material in the field, and to work it up into a homogeneous whole. 

 Such papers on the subject as I have hitherto contributed to the 

 "Records" of the Geological Survey deal with isolated areas ; and 

 it will only be by continually adding to these that the way can be 

 prepared for a thorough digest of the whole region. In the mean- 

 time, it seemed to me that the comparatively simple Sub-Himalayan 

 zone need not wait until all the difficulties which surround the older 

 hills like a great cloud were dissipated. Moreover, in any case, it 

 would have seemed advisable to me to describe the Sub-Himalayan 

 zone first, whether the whole were combined in one book or not ; 

 because, just as the physical aspect of these hills suggests a step- 

 ping-stone from the plains to the lower parts of the main range, so 

 does their geology prepare us, or carry us, step by step, to an under- 

 standing of the great geological problems sealed up in those moun- 

 tain strongholds. 



In the year 1864 Mr. Medlicott produced his memoir "On the 

 Geological Structure and Relations of the South- 

 ern Portion of the Himalayan Range between 

 the Rivers Ganges and Ravee." In that book he devoted most space 

 to the Sub-Himalayan zone; supplementing the palaeontological 

 researches of Cautley, Falconer, and D'Arehiac and Haime, by put- 

 ting the lithology and stratigraphy of the investigated area on a 

 sound basis of observed fact. Besides this, he was the first to at- 

 tempt a classification of the older Himalayan rocks. Finally, he 

 considered the whole of the Himalayan and Sub-Himalayan groups, 

 individually and together, with regard to the role they have played 

 in the general structure and history of the mountain-range. That 

 book, therefore, will very naturally form a constant subject of refer- 

 ence ; more so, indeed, than the works and papers of other writers on 

 adjoining areas, — e.g. Stoliczka, Lydekker, W. T. Blanford, R. D. 

 Oldham, McMahon. As for the authors, Herbert and Strachey, who 

 came before Medlicott, their results have been criticised by the latter 

 in his quoted memoir, and so need not be referred to again. 



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