1866.] the Western Himalaya and Afghan Mountains. 191 



It is evident that a list of fossils, such as is given here, is 

 insufficient to determine the age of a bed. My calling the Kothair 

 bed Carboniferous, is therefore only temporary, and it is possible, 

 and indeed probable, that the bed is either Permian or Triassic. 

 I have often felt inclined to regard it as Triassic ; but the total absence 

 of Ilonotis, Ammonites and other characteristic fossils prevents my 

 doing so. I have therefore preferred to represent the Kothair bed 

 as the top of the Carboniferous series, until some characteristic forms 

 be discovered. The Kothair bed was examined much more super- 

 ficially than the others, owing to want of time ; yet it is worthy of 

 notice that I have never heard of an ammonite having been found 

 in the valley of Kashmir, though the mountains of Kothair limestone, 

 at the extreme eastern end of the valley, are very often visited by 

 tourists and amateur geologists. 



51. The Kothair formation differs from the Zceawan and Weean 

 by the great quantity of shales it contains, these being in thick 

 strata between thin beds of limestone. The fauna is, I believe, 

 strongly indicative of a low swampy shore bathed by a shallow 

 brackish sea. The arrangement of the iron-ore is, I fancy, to be 

 explained only by the hypothesis of a clayey shelving sea board : any 

 one who has observed hot chalybeate springs issue from the earth, 

 near a flat piece of ground, must have noticed the sluggish stream 

 divide into rills and rillets, form shallow pools here and there, reunite 

 and divide again, meandering over the clayey soil ; he will have 

 noticed the oxide of iron contained in the water precipitated along 

 the rivulets and in the pools as a bright red peroxide, whilst the 

 surface of the nearly stagnant water is covered by a many-coloured 

 film. This, I would submit, is the very process by which the iron 

 of the Kothair shales has been deposited on the flat muddy shore 

 of the Carboniferous sea : the rills of chalybeate water have become 

 the tabular ribbons of our iron-ore, and we have therefore the iron- 

 stone arranged as a main flat vein, or rather in somewhat parallel 

 veins, with irregular small shoots on both sides, and occasionally 

 a thickened and widened mass representing a pool or a hole in the 

 bed of the stream. Many springs, such as I have described, exist 

 now-a-days in the Salt Range, near the Kafir Kote hill, and in several 

 localities in the Himalaya ; the iron mud they deposit would, under 

 avourable circumstances, and in the course of long years, form beds 



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