86 
Records of ilie Geological Survey of India. 
[vol. VII. 
Note. —Since the foregoing paper was in typo, the calamitous nows of Dr. Stoliczka’s 
death has been received. This opportunity is therefore taken of publishing a few last 
geological notes communicated in a private letter. The following is from a letter dated Kila 
Panj, Wakhan, 14th April 1874:— 
“ We crossed from Yangihissar to Sirikul in ten days; and after two days’ halt at 
that place, crossed Pamir Khurd in twelve days. The last few marches on this side 
were about the worst we had. The road is very bad, and the daily snow-storms so heavy, 
that on one day we were not able to make more than five miles. Wakhan itself is a 
miserably poor country; and it is a question whether we shall be able to get enough supplies 
to take us back, if wo do not get something sent up from Fyzabad. Our ponies will require 
at least twelve days to recover from the fatigue they had on the little Pamir. Whether by 
that time the road by Pamir Kalau will bo open is very questionable. 
“I ought to tell you something of the geology, but it is in very few words. There 
are no younger rocks the whole way than trias limestone. The Pamir Khurd proper is all 
gneiss and metamorphic schist. Do not imagine that the ‘ roof of the world ’ is an elevated 
plain; nay, it is a mere valley, well supplied with gneiss and boortsee, and from two to three 
miles in width. Prom the hills to the south, glaciers come down almost into the valley; 
while the hills on both sides were deeply clad in snow; so much so, that for several miles not 
even a few square feet of bare rock was visible. If wo go back by the Pamir, I shall try to 
make a halt of two days before reaching Sirikul, and examine the triassic limestone. Tho 
old slates give no hope of yielding any trilobites.”— Editok. 
On the foemeb extension of Geactees within the Kangba Distkict, 
by W. Theohaed, Geological Survey of India. 
Tho subject of the former extension of glaciers along tho southern slopes of the 
Himalayan chain to far greater distances than they now 
Preliminary remarks. , , . , , , , r ..... 
reach to, might at first seem of necessity to involve, tor 
the due treatment of so comprehensive a question, the examination of a far wider area than 
1 am about to review in my present remarks, and this to a certain extent is true, for 
the phenomena in question undoubtedly form but a portion of a very grand and widely spread 
display of glacial conditions extended over an area which, from the insufficiency of our 
data, it were at present premature even to endeavour in tho most general way to indicate by 
limits; nevertheless, as it is hardly possible for tho more enduring results of long continued 
glacial conditions to bo better studied or moro characteristicly displayed than in the Kangra 
district, and as tho subject, moreover, is one which has been rather neglected by previous 
writers, I conceive that a few remarks thereon, oven confining myself to the limited area 
indicated, will not be altogether without iuterest and value as a basis whence future obser¬ 
vations may bo extended both in an eastern and western direction. 
Moraines, the most striking no less than tho most enduring of the products of glaciation, 
form so conspicuous a feature of the surface of so largo a portion of tho Kangra district, 
that the attention of the least observant traveller is rivetted by them, and I had hardly set 
foot in tho district before I was questioned as to the origin of those trains of loose stones 
so common near the hills, and whose general aspect was so different from the ordinary accu¬ 
mulations of debris usually swept down by streams in such situations, and the magnitude of 
so many of the boulders in question rendering it obviously difficult to refer their transport 
to the agency of hill streams and suggesting rather the intervention of some mysterious or 
cataclysmal debacle. 
