324 



Geological Features of the Himalayan Mountains. [April 



by Dr. Falconer, in his Report on Tea cullivalion, tliough he informs 

 me that mine are erroneous; in the parts near the Snowy Peaks, where 

 the Author relied for his information on Capts. Herbert and Hodgson, 

 as, instead of consisting of gneiss, they are formed by one of the grand- 

 est outbursts of granite in the workl. The sections of the Central 

 range of India, from Sherghatly to Roghonautpore, formed by Mr. De 

 la Beche, from the Author's specimens and observations, correspond 

 with that previously published by the Rev. Mr. Everest, in 1831, in 

 the third volume of the Gleanings of Science. 



The great Gangetic valley consists of an extensive plain, which is 

 very gradual in its slope from Saharunpore to the Sunderbunds, v, p. x. 

 The structure is not easily detected, from the universal flatness, and 

 the horizontal nature of the depositions, while water being near the 

 surface, wells, the only works, reveal only a few feet in depth below. 

 The surface soil is generally sandy, with a varying proportion of clay, 

 which predominates in the substratum, and is in most places sufficient- 

 ly pure for making bricks. Calcareous particles are intermixed with 

 the soil and substratum in most parts. These in many places assume 

 the form of spongy cavernous nodules: in some the form of stalactites 

 or of roots, and are then apparently of modern origin ; in other places 

 they are in masses sufficiently large to be worked and used as a build- 

 ing stone. But the nodular appearance is the most remarkable, especi- 

 ally from the nodules being so abundant in some places, as to cover the 

 soil, and give the appearance of the surface being covered as if with a 

 fall of large hail-stones. This forms the extensively diffused A'^n/fMr 

 formation of India. 



In Calcutta, in deepening a tank, a group of full-grown trees were 

 found standing erect, and apparently lopped off, three or four feet above 

 the roots. In boring for water, rubbish and mould were first met with, 

 then sandy clay, and, at twenty feet, a vein of pure sand, the source 

 of the common springs of wells. Blue clay, with sand, — then black, 

 above a stratum of peat; with pieces of wood, that of the Soondree, 

 and at sixty feet, Kunkur nodules; reddish well-sand at seventy-five 

 feet, whence the river springs rise. Clays and sands, with some Kun- 

 kur, are found below this : a quicksand at 120 to 136 feet; and at 176 

 feet, quartzy sand and granitic gravel ; and from 350 feet below the 

 surface of Calcutta, the auger brought up a fossil bone, which is figured 

 in J. A. S. for March 1837. At Benares, Mr. Prinsep, in cutting a tun- 

 nel and sinking shafts, found, fifteen feet below the surface, a number 

 of half-quarried stones of a large size, on what he conceives must for- 

 merly have been the level of tho ground ; at thirty feet, some kunkur 



