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



minute crystals which now form a sort of intrusive band of a friable 

 incoherent rock. 



When this geyserian action subsided, the Palaeozoic animals had 

 died out. 



92. I now enter upon debatable ground. I have said before, that 

 the salt, gypsum and red marl of the Salt Kange — and I need hardly 

 say the gypsum and red marl of Spiti, the gypsum of Rukshu 

 (and that of Rodok ?), and most probably the salt of the Yarkandkash 

 valley, and also that of the Lataband mountains in Badakshan, all 

 belong to the same epoch and have probably a common origin. 

 I have said before that, this Saliferian formation has been placed by 

 Dr. A. Fleming in the Devonian. Dr. Jameson makes it superior to 

 the Carboniferous ; Major Vicary and M. Marcadieu believed it to be 

 Miocene or Pliocene ; some will have it volcanic, others sedimentary • 

 but nobody gives a good and well defined section of the relations 

 of this formation to the rocks above and below it.* This is much to 

 be regretted, and I will not increase the confusion by discussing here 

 the reasons which make me believe that the salt and gypsum of the 

 Himalayas belong to the Trias or the Permian. My opportunities 

 of observing the Saliferian formation have been few and of short 

 duration, and I have no good section to give in support of my opinion. 

 I shall therefore refer the reader to the note to para. 64, and proceed 

 with the next formation. 



93. Whatever had taken place beeween the end of the Carboni- 

 ferous epoch and the beginning of the Jurassic, it appears tolerably 

 evident that the Jurassic sea bathed the shores of a long strip of 

 land or succession of large islands, very similar to those which the 

 Carboniferous sea had bounded. The Jurassic sea does not appear to 

 have been much deeper than the Carboniferous one had been ; the same 

 impurity of the limestone is noticed, the same admixture of sand and 

 clay with the calcareous matter, the same rarity of clean drifted sands, 

 the same prevalence of thin-bedcling, false-bedding and continual 



* Br. A. Fleming gives some sections in his Eeport on the structure of the 

 Salt Range ; but only two of these show the relations of the salt marl to the 

 Carboniferous limestone, and in one, sect. No. VIII., a number of more or less 

 theoretical faults are introduced which, if placed at the base of the mountain ! 

 limestone escapements, would then make this rock inferior to the salt. Another 

 section, No. VII. shows an anticlinal across a ravine, and then the salt marl 

 appears indeed to be placed under the Carboniferous limestone, 



