PAiiT 4.] Waagen: Geographical dislribution of fossil organisms in, India. 269 
■water origin. This, ho’weTer, does awaj with all analogy with, the European extra- 
Alpine formations ; and a much more important distinction is established between 
the two chief types of development of the Indian formations than is the difference 
between Alpine and extra-Alpine formations, it is the distinction between deposits 
of the open sea and those of an inland basin. Neither does the geographical dis¬ 
tribution of the two types fit the geogra23hical regions of the Himalaya and the 
Indian Peninsula, but is, as I shall endeavour to show, a totally different one. 
Although the crystalline rocks are not of the same great importance to the 
palaeontologist, as such, that they are to the geologist, they yet demand close 
consideration here, as they form the foundation of the sedimentary rocks, their 
geograjjhical disti-ibiition in earlier ages having determined in great measure the 
geographical distribution of the younger I’ocks ; moreover, they reveal themselves 
as metamorphosed sedimentary formations. 
If we now regard India with reference to these oldest rocks, it appears that the 
base of the peninsula projjer consists throughout of crystalline rocks, supporting 
the sedimentary rocks in small separate basins, and only in the western parts 
completely covered, over large areas, by eruptive formations. To the north-west 
the crystalline rocks of the Indian peninsula are bounded by the range of the 
Aia'ali mountains, to the west of which only younger sedimentary formations 
appear, extending far away into Uilucliistan aud Persia. In Kattywar also is a 
small mountain mass of crystalline rocks which may perhajjs join on to the 
larger Aravali range, as I have indicated on the map, but may perhaps be quite 
separated from it by tertiary deposits. 
The crystalline formations of the Himalaya form one of the most difficult 
chaptei’S in Indian geology, not only because of the inaccessibility of the dis¬ 
tricts in which they ajipear, but also because of the vast extent to which meta¬ 
morphism there prevails, which leads one to suspect that completely crystalline 
schi.sts are frequently but sedimentary formations of i)alseozoic age at the outside. 
However, thus much is certain, that the Himalaya contains not one, but two 
zones of crystalline rocks, the northern of which only forms the boundary divi¬ 
sion between the true mountain region and the Steppe region of Central Asia. 
To show this more clearly, I will describe a few sections more fully. 
In the extreme west it is not jjossible to demonstrate the two zones, as that 
region is as yet too little known, and the political condition is such that a consid¬ 
erable time will doubtless elapse before researches can be undertaken there. 
If the section of Mt. Sirban, which I and Wynne have described,^ be followed 
north-westward, crystalline talc schists and finally also gneissoid rocks will be 
seen to emerge from below the clayslates, but the boundary at the Black Moun¬ 
tain, beyond which no Em-ojican may penetrate, will be reached before a change 
in the petrological characters of the rocks indicates the approach to a fresh zone 
of sedimentary formations. Or it may be that the first sedimentary, as well as the 
first crj’stalline, zone is wanting here in the extreme west, and thus both terminate 
at the Jhilum, and that further to the west the second zones approach to the 
‘ Waagen and Wynne: Mem. Geol. Surv. of India, Vol. IX. 
