64 GRIESBACH : GEOLOGY OF THE CENTRAL HIMALAYAS. 



at all events one would scarcely conclude from a cursory examination 

 of the fossils contained in the black Productus shales (9), that the 

 break between the upper carboniferous and the former could have 

 been of^very great extent as regards time ; the black shales (9) yield 

 forms which might be upper carboniferous quite as well as permian, 

 though structurally they belong to the overlying system of strata. 

 There is perhaps no other formation in Asia which has a wider 

 Wide extent of car- area of distribution than the carboniferous ; we 

 Coniferous deposits. know that it is foun(] throughout the entire 



length of the Himalayas, and as far distant as in Kashmir scarcely 

 differs in lithological character, nor in the peculiar fauna it contains. 



I myself have proved its existence in the hill ranges (Siah-K6h) 

 east of Ka'bul, have met with carboniferous beds in the Hindu Kush 

 and north of it, and seen it well developed in the mountain ranges 

 east and south-west of Herat, and again further west where carboni- 

 ferous rocks play an important stratigraphical role in North-Eastern 

 Persia. We know the same rocks extend throughout Northern Persia 

 into Armenia and the adjoining countries. In Central Asia 1 and 

 China 2 it is welLrepresented. 



Both in North-Eastern Persia and in Afghanistan I found evi- 

 dences which also show that there, as in the Himalayas, the close of 

 the carboniferous witnessed marked physical changes. The purely 

 marine deposits of the carboniferous I found followed by a mighty 

 system of beds, which in a large measure are littoral ; the beds imme- 

 diately following the carboniferous in those areas are conglomerates, 

 and plant-bearing (carbonaceous) sandstones and shales, which have 

 reminded me, when I first saw them, of our Indian lower Gondwanas 

 (Talchirs, &c. s ). 



Evidently the changes which took place near the close of the car- 

 boniferous were of a very wide-spread nature ; and if it required 

 proof that the great wrinkling process, which resulted in the elevation 

 of the Himalayas, did not begin in young tertiary times, but rather 



1 Mushketoff„Turkistan. « Richthofen, F.— China. 



3 Rec. Geol. Surv. Ind., Vol. XVIII, p. 62; XIX, pp. 49, 57, 242; XX, p. 98. 



( 64 ) 



