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



caused these numerous transverse faults observed in the Himalaya, 

 which have a general direction from N. to S., and with the beds 

 crushed one against the other at the northern end, whilst the fault 

 gapes at the southern extremity. 



All these phenomena, and several others which strike the naturalist 

 as he travels through these mountains, appear to me to prove without a 

 doubt, that the upheaving force was not applied at one certain point or 

 along one certain axis, but that the whole country, now covered 

 by the Afghan and the Himalayan mountains, was forced up into 

 an immense dome or arch, which broke along certain lines determined 

 by pre-existing volcanic zones, and settled into an oblique anticlinal, 

 of which the slopes are sliced by a succession of parallel faults.* 



98. It is a question of considerable interest to determine, with 

 some precision, the epoch at which the great and last upheaval of the 

 Himalaya occurred. We know that it was after the great mammals 

 had become developed ; and the extraordinary number of mammalian 

 species found in the Sewalik hills would naturally induce one to 

 consider a portion at least of what I have called the Upper Miocene as 

 older Pliocene. The Aralo- Caspian formation or steppe limestone, a 

 brackish water deposit, has been placed by Murchison and DeVerneuil 

 in the older Pliocene ; and one cannot help thinking that these shallow 

 but immense inland or inter-insular seas must have existed previous to 

 the final upheaval of the great mountains of Central Asia, and that it 

 is indeed movements connected with this final upheaval, which have 

 dried up the steppe-limestone and reduced these great seas to their 

 present dimensions. 



On the other hand, we have seen, that there exist in Thibet and in 

 Ladak great beds of horizontal deposits, unconformable to the beds on 

 which they abut, and containing fossil bones. Captain R. Strachey 

 appears inclined to believe these beds to have been deposited previous 

 to the upheaval of the Himalaya ; but I think the hypothesis is not 

 tenable, as it is impossible to understand how a " true sea-bottom 



* The hypothesis (advanced, I believe, by Professor Ansted in his " Ancient 

 World") that the rising of Central Asia caused a depression in the Indian Ocean, 

 marked by the coral islands of the Lacadives, the Maldives, the great Chagos 

 bank and some others, is ingenious ; the depression, however, requires proving 

 by actual observations. 



