STRATIGRAPHICAL FEATURES. 41 



gneissic area have shown that the gneiss which forms the nucleus of 

 nearly all the ranges south of the Southern Central Himalayas is 

 really a granite, and that this granite must have undergone extensive 

 metamorphism. 



So much seems certain that this granitic gneiss is itself the oldest 

 Schistose series ; vai- ™ck exposed in the Himalayas, or is at least 

 krita system. now j n p] ace of the oldest formation, which is 



overlaid, conformably I believe, by a schistose series of great thickness, 

 which varies much in lithological composition, and is well seen in all 

 the sections north of the Southern chain of the Central Himalayas. 

 Amongst the members of this series micaceous schists, talcose rocks, 

 phyllites and gneiss are commonest. Between it and the next fol- 

 lowing, clearly sedimentary rocks, which I have termed the haimanta 

 system, a clearly defined boundary scarcely exists. In nearly all 

 sections which I have hitherto examined between the Kali river and 

 Spiti, the schists seem to pass gradually into the overlying slates, 

 phyllites and quartzites of the haimantas. The latter therefore 

 belong structurally to the schistose strata below, and take part with 

 them in all the complicated flexures and minor folds which have 

 affected the Himalayas generally. This series of schists I distinguish 

 north of the Central Himalayas as the vaikrita 1 system. 



Passing from the tertiary hills which skirt thejsouthern margin 

 of the Himalayan system, to the line of the Tibetan watershed, 

 one crosses, as I have already said, a number of ranges within which, 

 broadly speaking, several lines of flexures and dislocations run more 

 or less parallel to each other. 



The older gneiss, the vaikritas and the haimantas are laid into a 

 succession of anticlinals with great synclinals in between. The 

 whole has suffered such extensive denudation that all the arches of 

 the anticlinals must have been carried away in very early periods, so 

 that now many of the flexures might easily be taken for normal suc- 

 cessions of great thicknesses of strata, and only the repetitions of a 

 long series of strata in reversed order will show that one really 

 moves over a denuded flexure instead of a series of beds all dipping 



1 Vaikrita, Sanskrit for metamorphosed. 



( 41 ) 



