KALU SERIES. 



only based on an examination of the range through glasses from the top 

 of Khurd Kabul hill and may be erroneous. Nevertheless, the series 

 certainly covers an extensive area in Eastern Afghanistan and probably 

 runs on through the Safed Koh to Chura and the Bazar valley. 



Kalu Series. 



Leaving the metamorphic region of Kabul and turning north- 

 wards and westwards to the Hindu Kush and Koh-i-Baba, we find a 

 number of groups of sedimentary rocks extending far to the north 

 through Saighan and Kahmard to the Oxus. Much of this area 

 is covered by a cloak of Cretaceous limestone, which lies uncon- 

 formably on all older formations, but in Ghorband, Bamian and the 

 upper part of the Helmand basin, Palaeozoic beds predominate, and 

 comprise the greater part of the Hindu Kush and Koh-i-Baba. 

 Between the Kotal-i-Hajigak and Bamian the latter range consists of 

 a series of thinly-foliated gneiss, schist, quartzite and slate, which 

 extends from the Paimiiri gorge to beyond Kalu. With these rocks, 

 at about 4 miles below Kalu, are associated thick beds of conglo- 

 merate. To the east and north-east of the caravansarai (robdt) of 

 Kalu, the hills are composed of slates often dark and carbonaceous 

 (graphitic) . The whole series recalls the Haimantas of the Himalaya, 

 but in the absence of fossils we have no direct evidence as to its age. 

 -Its stratigraphical relations are not clear and my traverse was too rapid 

 to permit of my working them out, but the series appears to be overlain 

 by a bed of hematite followed by limestone, which, at the western 

 foot of the Kotal-i-Hajigak, contains a fauna probably of Devonian 

 age (see next page). We may therefore assume — if we are right in 

 regarding it as older than the limestone — that the Kalu series represents 

 the lower part of the Palaeozoic group. 



The only other locality in which this series has been recognised it! 

 the Ghorband valley, where gneiss, schist and graphitic slate form 

 the walls of the gorge through which the river debouches on to the 

 plain of Koh-i-Daman. Between the gorge and Ashawa the valley 



