1SG7.] the Western Himalaya and Afghan Mountains. 91 



granite, gneiss, &c, which cannot be easily compressed or folded, than 

 by the flat beds of dusts, slates, lavas, ashes and fossiliferous rocks. 



87. Glancing now at the Afghan mountains, we find that their 

 chains have a steady direction from the north-east to the south-west. 

 We find also that, as far as has been ascertained, the dip is invariably 

 N. W. or W. N. W. ; that is, presents the same phenomenon as in 

 the Himalaya, of the beds of rock rising towards the plains of India. 

 This dip is that of all the rocks of the trans-Indus districts ; it is that 

 of the beds in Verziristan, and of most of the nummulitic strata 

 in Hazara, and indeed, wherever it has been possible to examine 

 it, it has been found to be north-westerly. We cannot therefore refuse 

 to admit, that the strike of the Afghan mountains meets the strike of 

 the Himalayas, and the dip of the latter being North-easterly and 

 that of the former North-westerly, we are justified in concluding, that 

 the whole of these huge mountains forms one and the same system of 

 upheaval ; that a tremendous dome or swell did surge up in the region 

 of our Silurian volcanic archipelagoes, anil that the Himalayas on one 

 side and the Afghan mountains on the other are faulted slopes of a 

 gigantic oblique anticlinal ! 



A true anticlinal it cannot be called ; it is more properly the result 

 of an incalculable force pressing outwardly the crust of the earth and 

 endeavouring to raise it into a dome ; and as such a dome could neither 

 be raised nor settled down again without much fracturing of the crust 

 of the earth, the lines of fracture followed the direction of the old 

 volcanic lines, and on one side ran N. W. — S. E. (Himalayas) and on 

 the other N. W. — S. E. (Afghan mountains). 



No good explanation has yet been advanced of the general N. E. 

 clip of the Himalaya; none has even been attempted of the N. W. 

 dip of the Afghan mountains. By placing the axis of the dome 

 between these two masses of mountains, and considering these moun- 

 tains as the opposite jambs of an oblique anticlinal, the singular dip 

 of both is satisfactorily explained. 



88. PL XI. is intended to give an idea of the great fissures of the 

 Afghan-Himalayan system of mountains, 



