1854.] Notes on the Geology of the Punjab Salt Mange. 659 



kind. It also occurs coarsely crystalline of a greyish white colour, 

 there is also a compact grey kind, but large blocks of the best kinds 

 are not readily got. The ordinary gypsum is greyish white mottled, 

 and varieties occur of various shades of red, brown, and greenish. 

 Small crystals of selenite are also abundant in the marl, which owes 

 its preservation from being washed away in a great measure to this 

 mineral. The gypsum and salt appear to occupy a high position in 

 the marl, but it is difficult to assign them any particular place. The 

 salt occurs in strata of about two feet or more in thickness, separ- 

 ated by a thin parting of red marl, of not more than half an inch, 

 so that the entire body of salt may be regarded as one band of 

 probably not less than 100 feet in thickness. The upper and lower 

 layers of salt decrease in thickness while the partings of marl are 

 proportionately enlarged, and contain coarse granules of salt, so that 

 a blending occurs between the crystalline salt and the red marl 

 which greatly opposes any attempt to examine their junction. The 

 salt is, I believe, in one great band only, but the dislocations which 

 the red marl has suffered, have so broken up the original bed and so 

 altered the levels of the disconnected portions of the sheet, that 

 much obscurity unavoidably exists on this point. The surface planes 

 of the beds of salt are quite parallel and smooth, abruptly terminat- 

 ing and cutting off the cubes of which the bed of salt consists. 

 These cubes dissected out by the action of water in the mine, and 

 standing in high relief, form a really beautiful object when lighted 

 up by the miners' lamps, and the salt even in large blocks possesses 

 a very mild and pleasing translucency. Fractures in the salt usually 

 occur transverse to the bedding, and it is common to see in the mines 

 and galleries, huge cubic fragments depending as it were from the 

 roof as though arrested in the very act of falling. These fragments 

 frequently move, and are arrested before finally coming down, the 

 salt which crumbles from their sharp edges giving timely warning to 

 those beneath. This, together with the fact of the mines being 

 deserted during the most dangerous part of the year (the rains), 

 accounts for the paucity of serious accidents among the miners, who 

 in most instances are the victims of their own carelessness. Most 

 of the falls, oddly enough, seem to take place at night. In no part 

 of the red marl, have I ever observed a fragment of any foreign rock 



