184 Mr. Verchere on the Geology of Kashmir, [No. 3, 



ance, suggestive of their having been baked, and they weather in 

 rounded bosses like many volcanic rocks. I have suggested that 

 their amygdaloidal condition and their " metamorphic weathering" 

 may be accounted for by the hypothesis that hot ejecta of volcanoes, 

 either hot water, steam, hot ashes or a current of lava, had found their 

 way into a shallow sea and set it a-boiling. It might be said that 

 these very impure calcareous muds might have had gases generated 

 in their interior by the decomposition of organic matter or some other 

 cause ; but many layers which are much more foetid and were there- 

 fore more likely to emit gases are not at all amygdaloidal, and besides, 

 there is so much volcanic power manifested all over our tract of 

 country, that it is more natural to invoke a little steam to boil mud 

 with, than to look for less obvious hypotheses. But another reason 

 in favour of volcanic metamorphism is, that these same white 

 baked limestones have been observed in other localities, near Manus 

 Bal in Kashmir and in the Kafir Kote mountain, in the Punjab, and 

 in these localities they are disturbed by actions which appear to have 

 taken place locally and to have affected these limestones much more 

 than the rocks below them. The beds of Manus Bal will be de- 

 scribed hereafter in these pages, and we shall be able to observe how 

 faulted and twisted are the white limestones of that place. At the 

 Kafir Kote there has been a similar local upheaval, and the disorder 

 is very considerable. In this locality a felspathic sand, invaded by 

 quartzite in tortuous branches, is the remains of the volcanic action 

 which has taken place there, and the limestone, though much less 

 marly than in Cashmir, is filled with geodes and veins of spar. I 

 believe these actions to have been local and not very extensive ; they 

 had little effect on the Zeeawan bed which had, by the time they took 

 place, become tolerably consolidated, and they merely fractured and 

 pushed aside the nearest portion of the bed ; but they acted power- 

 fully on the yet soft and muddy Weean bed, curving it and twisting 

 it in all sorts of manners and directions ; and when these folds and 

 twists were again disturbed, probably intensified and placed in new 

 positions by the final upheaval of the Himalaya, they became what 

 we see them now, viz. most incomprehensible doublings and reversings 

 of strata. Let us also remember the beds which I. mentioned as 

 having been seen from the brow of the last spur of the Zebanwan 



