CRYSTALLINE SERIES. 



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consists of gneisses, crystalline schists and limestones, and forms the 

 ranges bordering the Kabul plain on the south, including most of the 

 small hills at Charasia, and the range separating the Kabul valley from 

 Masai. This range is cut through by the stream which flows from 

 Khurd Kabul past Butkhak to join the Kabul river at Pul-i-Charkhi, 

 but the rocks continue on the opposite side of the gorge and form the 

 lower half of the high hill (" Khurd Kabul" station, 11,143 feet) which 

 overlooks Khurd Kabul on the north. 



Between the Kotal-i-Munar, on the same range, and the conspicuous 

 peak Shakh-i-barant (8,985 feet), the prevailing rocks are mica-schist, 

 quartzite, schistose crystalline limestone and various intrusive igneous 

 rocks, including diorite and granite. Shakh-i-barant itself consists of 

 an igneous complex below capped by thin-bedded and intenselj' folded 

 limestone. On the hill-side, behind the upper village of Keshlak, a, thin 

 bed of hematite, associated with schistose kcmatite-quartzite, occurs 

 among the schists and limestones. 



A thick bed of the same rocks, associated with limestone and 

 hornblende-schist, evidently a continuation of the Kabul series, is 

 recorded by Captain Drummond as occurring a few miles away on the 

 Silawat Pass to the east of Katasang (5, 75). 



To the south and west of Kabul, the famous hills, Sher darwaza and 

 Asmai, at the foot of which the citv stands, are composed of thinly 

 foliated hornblende-biotite-gneiss associated, near Indaki, with epidio- 

 rite, an old and massive intrusion, quartz-garnet-actinolite rock and 

 garnet -sericite schist. The two latter are presumably altered sediments ; 

 the quartz-garnet-actinolite rock is very like certain rocks found in the 

 Ilaimantas in Spiti and in the Carbonaceous system near Simla, and 

 which have been produced by the metamorphism of a sandstone or a 

 quartzite by a basic (dioritic) dyke. 



The same series of crystalline rocks extends over the whole Kabul 

 plain, cropping out here and there from below either the alluvium or 

 the Upper Siwalik sands and conglomerates. It probably forms also 

 much of the Paghman range, particularly the southern part between 

 Arghandi and Shakar dara. 



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