22 



HA Y DEN : GEOLOGY OF NORTHERN AFGHANISTAN. 



Below these fossiliferous beds is grey limestone followed lower down 

 by darker limestone full of sections, in white calcite, of large bra- 

 chiopods, probably Sjiiri/er sp. Lower down again is another band of 

 limestone containing many small Product* ; but the matrix of all these 

 fossiliferous bands is so hard that I could get out nothing specifically 

 determinable. With time to follow the beds along the hill-side, it 

 would no doubt be possible to find recognisable species. Even my very 

 hurried inspection, however, suggests strongly the presence of the 

 Himalayan Trias and the Productus Limestone, thus linking the Kabul 

 area with Kashmir on the one hand and the Bazar valley (15, 111) 

 and, indirectly, the Salt Range on the other. 



This limestone series probably covers most of the ranges on the east 

 of the Kabul plain. It was at first taken by Mr. Griesbach for the 

 Upper Cretaceous limestone of Turkestan (10, 23), but he subsequently 

 recognised that it was older (13, 69) although absence of fossils pre- 

 vented his determining its age. What is probably an inlier of the same 

 series occurs among the Tertiary beds to the west of Sarobi where it 

 contains Megalodon sp. and ? Dicerocardium sp. and is absolutely 

 identical in appearance with the Megalodon limestone in the Para stage 

 of the Himalayan Trias (16, 84). The series thus appears to range in 

 age from Carboniferous to Upper Trias at least and possibly higher. 

 It cannot yet be subdivided and must be dealt with for the present 

 as a stratigraphical unit under a single name. As it caps, and probably 

 forms the greater part of, the Khingil range on the east of the Kabul 

 plain, it might be conveniently named the "Khingil series", a term 

 which may be discarded as soon as it becomes possible to subdivide it 

 into smaller units. 



Locally the limestone has been considerably altered by igneous 

 intrusions, chiefly of granite and serpentine. The Khingil series 

 appears to extend from Khurd Kabul across the Lataband and the 

 Kabul river, and probably forms most of the hills between the eastern 

 edge of the Kabul plain and the Panjshir river. To the south-east it 

 may form the Karkacha range in Tezin ; this assumption, however, is 



