101 
PAET 2.] W^nne: A. geological reconnoissance from Ihe Indus. 
to fill this gap, as far as possible, taking advantage this season (1879) of my 
camp being on the frontier, after visiting the continuation of the Salt Range 
beyond the Indus, I carried observations as far as Thai. Owing chiefly to 
circumstances connected with the present Alfghan campaign this country, a]way.s 
more or less subject to frontier difficulties, presented others regarding scarcity of 
supplies, necessitating a rapid inspection of the gi'ound. 
The whole of the country immediately to the east and south is within the 
limits of the great fringing belt of tertiaiy rocks which borders, where it does 
not form, the outer hills of the Western Himalayan area (taking this in its 
extended sense to include all the most northerly Cis-Afi^ghan mountains of the 
Punjab). These tertiary rocks of the neighbourhood embrace the upper and 
lower Siwalik sub-divisions of the newer mechanically formed bods, and also very 
extensively the underlying older tertiary “ Muirce group,” and the eocene 
(Subathu) limestones; the tw'o last passing into' each other by alternation, and 
the limestones becoming largely developed westwards in the Kohat salt field. 
The whole route from Kushalgarh to Thai lies in the Subathu zone, for 93 
miles. Cis-Indus, all along the northern margin of the Rawalpindi plateau, the 
country is traversed by what I have called the abnormal junction featiu'o, form¬ 
ing the inner boundary of the outer tertiary zone; it is coincident with the base 
of the first high hills rising to the northwards; but further west, trans-Indus, 
though the same physical relations continue, of lofty limestone mountains, com¬ 
prising various mesozoic and eocene groups, bordered to the south by inferior 
hills of tertiary age, this junction feature has not been examined, because the 
higher mountains at the base of which it should occur are all but entirely occu¬ 
pied by the u ild Affridis, Zhuwakkis, Akhor Kheyls, IJrukzais and other Yagi, 
or independent tribes, whose country is closed to Europeans by British authority, 
as strictly as Chinese Tibet is by the officials of that region. Discordance of 
one kind or another is the strongest characteristic of this junction feature, by 
some regarded as a line of fracture, by others as an unconformity marking a 
limit of deposition, traceable from the N.-W. Punjab to the Simla area of the 
Himalayas, possibly much fui-ther, and analogous to a very similar feature in the 
structure of the outer Alps. It dates from the Himalayan mountain-forming 
disturbance, posterior to earliest eocene times; and it is remarkable that, although 
some appearance of a ti-ansition from the older nummulitic limestone masses 
north of the line into the newer and more markedly nummulitic beds to the south 
has been observed, these newer beds have been but doubtfully distingnished north 
of the junction in the Upper Punjab. The weight of evidence, such as it is, 
goes to show that the upper nummulitics ranging south of the junction were, 
if at all, but sparingly deposited and capriciously distributed over the region to 
the north; nor is it at all certain that the nummulitic beds north of the junction 
may not be but a local development of older eocene limestones along the inner 
(northern) side of the tertiary zone. 
Kushalgarh, where the Indus is now crossed by a bridge of boats, is the 
locality given for some mammalian bones and teeth, formerly miscalled the Attock 
fossils, which present certain differences from Siwalik forms, as pointed out 
by Mr. Lydekker in those Records, Vol. IX, pt. 3, Pal. Ind. Series X. 2. The 
