100 Mr. Verchere on the Geology of Kashmir, [No. 2, 



geological epoch by the river-terraces, raised lacustrine deposits and 

 other indications of diminished rain-fall.* 



10. Examining the porphyry of the Kaj Nag mountains in hand 

 specimens, we find it composed of the following minerals : — 



a. — Paste of granular, white, opaque albite, fusing before the 

 blowpipe without much difficulty or = 4J of Yon Kobell's scale of 

 fusibility. 



b, — Small transparent crystals of quartz-like rock-crystals. 



c. — Large crystals of glassy shining albite, with a vitreous lustre 

 and a lamellar cleavage. Sections of the crystals are sometimes as 

 much as five inches long. 



d. — Plates of white mica ; sometimes grey. 



e. — Dark augite (or Horneblende ?) with an Iodine lustre and a dark 

 greenish grey colour. It fuses = 4, without swelling or boiling. 



f. — G-arnets ; red, brittle and cracked. 



g. — Grains of magnetic iron ore ; metallic lustre ; black. 



h. — G-old ; in invisible scales. 



The paste of granular albite is hardly to be seen in the most 

 crystalline specimens of the porphyry ; but it increases very much as 

 the several crystals are less abundant and less well defined, forming 

 rocks in which we see, beside it, only a few specks of dark augite and 

 spangles of white mica ; even these occasionally disappear, and* we 

 have a rock having a saccharine appearance, and entirely composed of 

 minute shining grains of albite. Specimens are found in all the 

 stages of transition, from the highly crystallized porphyry to the 

 saccharine rock. 



The quartz is not very abundant in the most perfect porphyry, 

 but it increases in some specimens, rows of small rock crystals appear- 



* The diminished rain-fall is the result of the filling up with diluvial deposits 

 of the great troughs situated between the Himalaya, the Affghan mountains 

 and the mountains of Central India once covered by the sea, and now repre- 

 sented by the valleys of the Ganges and Indus. This filling up of the 

 sea-communication once existing between the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian 

 Sea, converted the Himalaya's climate, then insular, or at least littoral, to an 

 eminently continental one. The tremendous rain-fall at Cherra-Poonjee 

 (5(H feet during S. W. Monsoons) enables us to form an idea of what the 

 snow-fall must have been on the high summits of the Himalaya in the clays 

 when the Bay of Bengal extended to the foot of the Siwalik hills, and the 

 Arabian Sea bathed the Salt Range. 



