2l8 GRIESBACH : GEOLOGY OF THE CENTRAL HIMALAYAS. 



Muth itself, and in fact the village is built on the fan which issues 

 from these ravines. It will be seen that a block of strata, which 

 comprises the black Productus shales (9), the Otoceras beds (10), and 

 the rest of the lower, middle and upper trias is inclosed conformably 

 between carboniferous beds (7 and 8) and the rhaetic which is strongly 

 developed. There is no silurian within miles of the section, — not 

 in fact till much further south. But between the dirty flesh-coloured 

 upper silurians (5) and the Crinoid limestone (7) of the carboni- 

 ferous, there is the strongly developed limestone system (6) inter- 

 calated, which I look upon as devonian. Stoliczka had evidently 

 mistaken the white quartzite (8) of Muth for the quartzite '5) of the 

 upper silurian, hence his mistake in believing that the carboniferous 

 system was only poorly represented as a series of black shales with 

 Productus,— the Kuling beds in fact, whereas the latter really only 

 form the very uppermost beds of the palaeozoics, underlying imme- 

 diately the passage beds (10) with Otoceras. 



Near Muth village, and on both sides of the valley, I found above 



the upper carboniferous limestone {8a) an un- 



Permo-trias near Muth. r . . r , 



broken succession of beds ranging from the 



permian Productus shales (9) to beds with Terebratula gregaria and 

 Rhynchonella austriaca (upper rhaetic) ; and, as I have already shown, 

 this system of strata must be considered as being unconformable to 

 those below. The trias with the permian Productus shales at their 

 base overlap the entire series of the upper carboniferous in the 

 Central Himalayas ; and I think therefore on stratigraphical grounds 

 the division between the palaeozoic group and the next following 

 should, in the Himalayas, be made at the end of the upper carbonifer- 

 ous rather than the permian. 



The permian Productus shales (10) are about 150 to 200 feet in 

 Permian Productus thickness, mostly densely black, crumbling and 

 shales. so f t> divided by strings of ferruginous concre- 



tions and layers of splintery shales. Occasionally an irregular bed 

 of dark grey to olive-coloured sandstone, weathering dark brown, 

 divides the formation and is generally full of fossils, chiefly Productt. 

 ( 218 ) 



