PAiiT 4.] Theobald: Fleistocenu depodts of Ihe Norlkern Punjab. 
necessary power req^nired to carry the block onwards ; but no such accumulation 
is seen, and hence it is very doubtful if the river ever acted in this manner. 
Secondly, the blocks, after being engulphed in the main channel, may be supposed 
to have been destroyed by wear and tear and the impact of rolling masses during 
floods. Such a process, no doubt, disposes of a vast bulk of materials in every 
stream; but it is a process probably more active in mountain torrents with a 
steeper fall, but loss actual body of water than the Beas. Thirdly, there is the 
scouring action, which dui-ing floods undermines big obstacles to the current, and 
eventually entombs them in the grave thus produced, levelling the gravel flush 
over the spot where they have disappeared ; and this I believe to bo the case 
in the Beas, and the true explanation of the paucity of ‘ erratics ’ in its channel. 
To consider now the case of a river wlioso velocity lai’gely exceeds that of 
the Beas at Sujanpur. The Jholnm below Uri fulfils this condition, as the 
stream is there in many spots a ‘race,’ and the bed of the river is full, moreover, 
of those very erratics, derived from the lofty peaks of the Kaj IsTag adjoining. 
What w'ator can do in a stream bed with such ‘ erratics ’ wc hero see. The effect 
of the rapid stream is to clear away all gravel and smaller boulders, leaving the 
larger masses packed against each other, with great cavernous interspaces between. 
Over these masses of rock, the waters cascade in sheets of foam, or force their 
way in hissing jets between or beneath them; but the rocky masses themselves 
are immovcably packed by the very force and agency of that clement which 
some would regard as capable under such circumstances of sweeping them away. 
Not a bit of it—occasionally [a blasted pine, whirling down stream, gets swept 
between the blocks, and by its leverage wrenches them apart; but this is a pass¬ 
ing incident, and its effect, so far as any onward and progressive movement of the 
blocks is concerned, is inappreciable. 
These two instances of the Beas and Jhelum illustrate' the power possessed 
by water under the ordinary operations of nature to move masses like the sub- 
Himalayan erratics ; but the necessity of weighing the argument is almost dis¬ 
pensed with from the now established fact (pre.suming the Kangra and Hazara 
deposits to be homologous) that the erratics do not occur embedded in the old 
river gravels, but simply resting on them. 
How, too, I ask, on the su 2 ;)position advocated by Mr. Campbell, that the 
‘ erratics,' as I consider them, are merely masses transported down a ‘ fan ’ by 
stream action—how, I ask, comes it, that they have crossed over the Beas from 
north to south, as shown iii my maj) above Sujanpur. It is impossible that the 
materials swep)t into a i-iver down a ‘ fan ’ should cross its channel and be found 
on the oi) 2 )osito bank. With the old glaciers the case was different. They coin¬ 
cided generally only with the present valley.s, but not with the existing river bed.s . 
and hence, as in the case of the ‘ erratics ’ on the south bank of the Beas at 
Sujanpur, their moraines were breached by the rivers which succeeded them. The 
same argument and the same latitude ■will not apply to any supposed rivers, as 
agents in producing this arrangement of ‘ cri’atics as, sujqiosing the Beas (as is 
a simple sup^io-sition, cpiito jioasible) to liaA^o formerly held the more southern 
course, which I suppiose the glacier here did, and to have run south of whore the 
‘ erratics ’ in question noAV occur, yet it is impossible to suppose that the river 
