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



Chamberlain. The General himself, in one of his dispatches, describes 

 some of the hills as " granite," putting a note of interrogation after the 

 word, and thus showing that the granitoid rock he noticed was 

 sufficiently peculiar in its appearance to make it doubtful whether it 

 was really a granite. From specimens of the mountains near the Pass, 

 kindly given to me by Dr. Costello, I have no doubt that the 

 so-called granite is one of the varieties of porphyry described in 

 paragraph 12. It passes into a felstone composed of very elongated 

 and large spindles of opaque, dirty white, and somewhat granular 

 felspar and bluish semi-translucent glassy felspar, and in the 

 spare felspathic paste which cements the spindles together, a few 

 irregular grains are seen of a mineral having a metallic golden lustre, 

 and which is probably Diallage or Bronzite. The rock has a great 

 resemblance to, and is indeed identical with, the most compact sort of 

 felstone seen at Baramoola. Bands of quartzite, of which I have 

 seen very beautiful specimens as clear as Wenham lake ice, are also 

 extensively developed, as well as enormous masses of compact gypsum 

 and tabular selenite. 



Dr. Bellew, in his " Report on the Yusufzaies," describes a variety 

 of volcanic rocks occurring in the ranges which separate British 

 Yusufzaie from Chumla, Buneyr and Swat : " Feldspar grit" and 

 " various combinations of mica and felspar," " porphyry in a variety 

 of forms," "trap-rock in great variety," quartz, mica and clay-slate, 

 hornblende-rock, felspar-rock and amygdaloid ; " hard trap" (green- 

 stone ?) "loose, friable and crumbling" ditto, (ash?) He also de- 

 scribes granite and gneiss ; but he adds that the gneiss is quarried for 

 mill-stones, and, if these mill-stones, (which is very likely) are similar 

 to the mill-stones of Jellalabad, they are a coarse gneissoid felstone, 

 and not a gneiss. The granite again is a whitish rock, and we find 

 it connected with and surrounded by, rocks undoubtedly volcanic. 

 I have no hesitation therefore in regarding it as a granitoid porphyry, 

 similar to that of the Kaj Nag. A great deal of slate and " primitive 

 limestone'" is also mentioned in these mountains. 



Dr. Bellew concludes that these hills are " all of primitive and 

 metamorphic rocks ;" but the list of rocks he gives, proves conclusively 

 that they are of volcanic origin. 



These volcanic beds in Yusufzaie are capped, in some places, by beds of 



