86 



GR1ESBACH : GEOLOGY OF THE CENTRAL HIMALAYAS. 



nants, Pachydermata, and other animals from this district, presented 



to the Society by Sir Thomas Colebrooke and Dr. Traill, are in the 



Museum of the Geological Society, London." 



■* .* * * # * 



Mr. Lydekker discussed the evidence offered by these finds of fossil 

 bones and comes to the conclusion that the fauna ef the Hundes beds 

 comprises " with the exception of the alleged occurrence of Hippo- 

 therium, which does not appear to me to rest on sure grounds, only 

 living genera of mammals, all the extinct Siwalik genera being con- 

 spicuous by their absence, and I accordingly come to the conclusion 

 from this and from the foregoing conditions, that the beds in question 

 are probably of pleistocene age, and almost certainly not older than 

 upper pliocene/' 1 



The former writers on this subject, amongst them Falconer and 

 Strachey, assumed as probable that (i) these ossiferous beds were repre- 

 sentatives of the Siwaliks, and (2), that as animals whose remains are 

 found could not have lived in the high altitudes in which we find them 

 now (about 14,000 to 15,000 feet sea level), the deposits must have 

 been raised skice Siwalik times to their present height. Lydekker 

 has disposed of the first point, and has shown as most probable that 

 these beds are younger than the Siwaliks. 



As regards the second point, it is extremely unlikely from struc- 

 tural evidence that the ossiferous beds of Hundes have been raised to 

 their present height after their deposition. I have shown that sand- 

 stone deposits younger than Nummuh'tic, and in lithological character 

 closely resembling certain Siwalik sandstones, are unconformably 

 overlaid by the younger tertiaries in Hundes. The sandstones here 

 referred to are highly inclined, dipping north-east, and they cannot be 

 older than miocene, and probably are even younger. When the 

 horizontal deposits of Hundes were laid down, the Himalayas, including 

 even deposits as recent as the sandstones in question, had passed 

 through great changes, folding and compressing. I can offer no 

 evidence at present to show that since the deposition of the ossiferous 



1 Rec. Geol. Surv. Ind. XIV, 181. 



( 86 ) 



