STRATIGRAPH1CAL FEATURES. 47 



from the shores of the Caspian to Tibet and along the southern 

 margin of the Himalayas, continental conditions prevailed. Although 

 most of the great lines of flexures, which form the Himalayas, the 

 Hindu Kush, Safed Koh and Alburz must have existed already in 

 palaeozoic times, yet the great lateral compressions, which pushed 

 up the enormous masses of the Central Asian plateau with its fring- 

 ing rims of mountains were evidently formed after the miocene beds 

 were deposited, for we see the latter contorted and crushed, under a 

 cover of almost horizontal young tertiary deposits, which so far have 

 suffered little from the slow action of folding, which it may be assumed 

 is still going on. 



As I said before, the compression and folding of the Himalayan 

 deposits had been going on probably since palaeozic times, and 

 certainly long before the tertiary beds were laid down, yet it may be 

 assumed that during later middle tertiary times this process must 

 have received additional energy ; miocene deposits follow in the main 

 the area of distribution of the older rocks, and with the rest of the 

 tertiaries and upper cretaceous form one conformable whole, whilst 

 the principal crushing action is seen to have occurred between the 

 deposition of the miocene and pliocene formations. 



It is perfectly conceivable that such folding process may have 

 been accompanied by dislocations and intrusions into the latter of 

 eruptive rocks ; indeed this we see to have happened, — basaltic rocks 

 fill up the dislocation of the Hundes plateau, and completely alter the 

 lithological aspect of the older and middle tertiaries. 



So far there is nothing to show that the granite in the Himalayas 

 is much younger than the lowest palaeozoics, the strata of which it 

 traverses ; on the other hand, I shall show later that there are certain 

 points of strong resemblance in the geological histories of both the 

 Himalayas and the Perso-Afghan areas, which point to the possibility 

 of at least some of the intrusive granites of the Himalayas being 

 identical in age with those which are found in such force in the 

 Hindu Kush, in the Herdt and Kandahar provinces. As the latter 

 traverse upper cretaceous rocks, they cannot be older than that 



( 47 ) 



