227 
Met 4.] Theobald: Pleistocene deposits of the Northern Punjab. 
physically nor climatally have afforded greater facilities for the transport of large 
blocks than previously existed ; rather the contrary. 
In his “ further notes, &c.” (Record XII., p. II4), Mr. Wynne divides the 
pleistocene deposits of the Northern Punjab into an upper, middle, and lower 
sub-division, characterizing them respectively as “ Northern detrital drift,” 
“ Alluvium and river drift,” “ Post tertiary valley or lake deposits.” 
It may be questioned how far the middle and lowei- of these sub-divisions 
are sepai-able or dissimilar; but the great merit of this division is that it 
distinctly recognises the relative position of the ‘ glacial deposits’ and the older 
alluvium, and shows how nearly on the verge of discovering the true significance 
of this fact Mr. AVynne was. 
Mr. Wynne is, however, careful to let it bo known that he disclaims glacial 
agency in the distribution of his ‘Northern detrital drift’, not only by intro¬ 
ducing the somewhat superfluous adjective ‘ detrital but by the definition he 
gives at page 132 (b c.) :—“ Northern drift. I use this term instead of the more 
simple one “ erratic drift,” which would apjpear to convoy to some Indian geologists 
a closer connexion with glacial geology than is necessary to the purpose.” This 
disclaimer suffices to show how nearly Mr. Wynne missed recognising the 
essential merit of his own classification. Especially when read in connexion 
with what follows:—“ By Northern drift, then, is here iaeant that influx of 
travelled masses which has followed the course of the Indus from the north 
and been distributed over large spaces of the Rawalpindi plateau, to a distance 
(I am informed by Mr. Theobald) of 25 miles from the river. These bloeks 
are easily recognisable, aU along the upper Indus as far as I went, to be the same 
as those further down its course. They often rest on the terraces, and some of 
them are of very large size." Mark how very nearly discovering the truth 
Mr. Wynne must here have been (how he ‘ burned,’ as children say at ‘ blind 
man’s buff ’), could he only have recognised the significance of their not occurring 
in the terraced gravels though scattered about on them! Considering, too, that 
Mr. Wynne gives the girth of one of these bloeks near Torbela as 109 feet, his 
disclaimer of glacial agency on its transport seems to me to savour of caution 
overmuch ! It would, indeed, seem to be an afterthought, as in his Geology of 
the Salt Range, at page 117, Mr. Wynne thus expresses himself of these very 
blocks :—“ In other parts of the country, too, along the left bank of the Indus 
south of Attock, the foreign erratic blocks are too numerous and too large to be 
accounted for satisfactorily in any other way that I know of ”—that is, than by 
ice ; and it is, I think, to be regretted that Mr. Wynne should have been led to 
abandon this sound view, and substitute for it the disclaimer of glacial agency 
in his later paper, quoted above. 
At the end of the paper in the Records (XII, p. 132), Mr. Wynne notices 
a detached mass of limestone 127 paces in girth, which may possibly be an 
‘ erratic ’ slipped down from Sirban mountain, aided possibly by ice before the 
intervening ravine was cut, or, as I would suggest, when it might have been 
sheeted over by ice ; and Mr. Wynne records the discovery by myself of glacial 
strias on a block of quartzite below Torbela. I mention this to express my belief 
that the strife in question are not glacial, as I once supposed they might be ; but 
