278 
[vOL. XT, 
FecorilH of the Geological Survey of In ilia. 
while the tipper series, which rests unconformably on the lower, includes 
numerous limestones besides quartzites and clayslates. The same series of beds 
was observed by Foote* along the whole southern edge of the great basaltic region 
in the South Mahratta country. Here, as in the Madras region and the Vindhyan 
mountains, not a trace of a fossil is to be fonnd. 
Greatly richer in inclusions of the remains of organic beings, and conse¬ 
quently far more interesting to the palaeontologist, are the Indian mesozoic forma¬ 
tions. Here also two types are distinguishable, in accordance with which the de¬ 
posits in different parts of the country are developed; but here they are also charac¬ 
terized by their fossils. If we first look more closely at that kind of develop¬ 
ment which from its principle occurrence in the Himalayas has been termed the 
“ Himalayan type,” and w'hich contains exclusively marine sediments, we shall 
find it best developed in the North-Western Himalayas, northward of the first 
crystalline zone. Above the carboniferous limestone comes a long series of lime¬ 
stones alternating with softer beds, in which the faunas can be very -well divided 
according to the several horizons. Stoliczka^ has left us the most reliable in¬ 
formation about these formations, the occurrence of which, in Spiti especially, he 
has more fully described. 
The trias there begins with a bed of limestone, consisting almost entirely 
of the shells of Halobia lommeli (as determined by Stoliczka), overlying 
crumbling shales with Spirif. Iceilhavi and Prod, semireticidatus.^ 
Above this limestone follows a kind of ” giant-oolite,” which yielded the great¬ 
est number of the fossils described by Stoliczka. It passes up into thin-bedded 
earthy limestones without fossils. This series of beds composes Stoliczka’s Li- 
lang series. Beyrich* has tried to make it appear probable that the whole fauna 
derived from these beds belongs to the Muschelkalk period, but that possibly the 
upper beds, which in Spiti are poor in fossils, might be fossiliferous in the 
north of Kumaun and in other places, and contain faunas of the Keuper age. 
The next higher division recognized by Stoliczka is the Para limestone. This 
is but a few feet thick in Southern Spiti, but increases in thickness to about 1,000 
feet to the northward of the Baralatze pass. They are dolomitio limestones, 
partly massive, partly thin-bedded, and then veiy earthy. The only fossils they 
have yielded are Blceroaardimii himalagmse, Stoliczka, Megalodon triqueter Wulf., 
some Chemnitzias and Neosclmodm. Above these beds follows a series of lime¬ 
stones, about 200 feet thick, whose lowest beds, however, appear to belong already 
to the lowest juT-a (lias). Stoliczka calls these limestones Tagling limestones. 
* Foote : Mem. Oeol. Sniv. of India, XII. 
” Stoliczka : Mem. (leol. Surv. of India, V. 
“ Among tlie materials wlucU Stoliczka collected on hi,? tour to Yarkand, I saw a Ceratite of 
the typo of the Salt Range fonns, together with a globose Ammonite from the same bed ; the 
‘ Bunter Sandstcin” appiars thus to he represented also in other places. Also Amm. peregrinus, 
Beyr. and the Spiti rock specimens described by Giimhe], point to the existence of the Bunter 
Sandstein. 
* Beyrich : Abhandl. Akad. d. Wissensch., Berlin, I86t?, p. 141-147. 
