6 MIDDLEMISS: PHYSICAL GEOLOGY OF SUB-HIMALAYA, 



A similar misconception is to be found in Mr. Mellard Reade's 

 " Origin of Mountain Ranges/' a more recent publication. He says :' 

 " The Himalaya, the Andes, the Alps, and the mountains of the Cau- 

 casus have been to the larger extent upheaved in tertiary times ; " 

 and further on, 8 referring to India, he makes the startling announce- 

 ment that " The tertiary [system] alone, measuring 30,000 feet, has 

 "been upheaved and carved by denudation into the greatest mountain 

 " system of the globe,— the Himalaya/' To say that the mountains of 

 Wales and the Lake District were carved out of post-tertiary glacial 

 deposits, would have a relatively greater basis of credibility than 

 the statement in question ; for those glacial and palaeozoic rocks are 

 less unequal, in height and ratio of distribution, than are the tertiary 

 and the Himalayan rocks in India. I shall have further remarks to 

 make on this head in the body of the work. 



These instances show how hard it is to break down an ancient 

 An impartial view prejudice. For a long time, the fact that the 

 solicited. youngest Siwalik conglomerates seemed to 



share in the same folds which the oldest Himalayan rocks have shared 

 in convinced the geological world that the date of the upheaval 

 of the whole Himalayan range was quite modern ; and this belief, 

 once engendered, has steadily gone on propagating itself in spite of 

 later research. If, in the following pages, I can do something 

 towards bringing about a more reasonable and impartial view of the 

 case, I shall be content. 



The material for this memoir has been collected mainly during the 

 months of January, February, and March 1887 ; January, February, 

 March, and April 1888 ; and January, February, and March 1889. As 

 having had something to do with preparing the way for a geological 

 exploration of this region, I may mention that, on first joining the 

 Survey at the close of 1883, I accompanied Mr. R. D. Oldham over 

 portions of the Siwalik range and the Dehra Dun, by which means 

 I was able to see a part of the area described by Mr. Medlicott. 



1 Chap. V, page 29. 



2 P- 73- 



( 64 ) 



