1867.] the Western Himalaya and Afghan Mountains. 109 



In the settle-down, the parallel zones, into which the sides of the vault 

 were broken, would naturally assume an angle of dip much greater 

 than was that of the vault previous to its fracture, as the sides of the 

 vault, in coming down again, would be submitted to considerable 

 pressure, and therefore much redressed. It is not unlikely, therefore, 

 that it is the effect of this pressure which has caused, in man}' mountains 

 of the Himalayas, the appearance of younger rocks dipping under older, 

 of felstone under porphyry, of schist and gneiss under granite. 



The geologist must naturally expect to find a great many com- 

 plications amongst these immense mountains. The view I have 

 endeavoured to explain is a general one, and will, I hope, be better 

 substantiated when we know more of the countries of the Afghan- 

 Himalayan system. With a little thought, I entertain a hope that 

 the geologist, in finding apparent contradictions to what I have 

 advanced, will always be enabled to discover the cause of the com- 

 plication, at first apparently irreconcileable to my hypothesis. 



There is one more remark to be made. The direction of the 

 Silurian linear volcanoes of the Himalaya not being parallel to that 

 of the Afghan chains, we have not a true anticlinal, but an oblique one. 

 At the northern end of the axis of this oblique anticlinal, we have 

 therefore a pressing of the sides one against the other, whilst at the 

 southern end, we have a wide divergence of the ridges : at the northern 

 end of the axis, we have the chains abutting one against the other, and 

 thus supported at a great height ; at the southern end we have the 

 central beds unsupported and sunk down very low when the settle- 

 down took place ; hence the high plateau of Pamer at one end and 

 the low plains of India at the other. Again, when the Himalayan slope 

 of the anticlinal was settling down, many of the great masses of por- 

 phyry, schist and gneiss resisted the general tendency to dip N. E., and 

 caused a local fault to take place. This fault acted as the axis of 

 an anticlinal for the locality immediately surrounding the mass of 

 porphyry, schist or gneiss ; and we find therefore such huge masses as- 

 suming the dip of the western branch of the Afghan-Himalayan 

 anticlinal, or dipping N. W. Hence, the singular phenomenon, 

 long ago noticed by Captain R. Strachey, that some of the great peaks 

 of the Himalayas dip N. W., whilst all the beds round them dip 

 N. E. It is also this same obliquity of the anticlinal which has 



