part 3 .] Theobald ,. Ancient Glaciers of the Kangra District. 
95 
to the immediate vicinity of the bungalow. Still, however, the dak bungalow, or rather 
perhaps the still higher Mission church, may be regarded as marking the highest level of 
glacier action; and to the action at a very early epoch of a glacier descending the course 
of what is now a deep valley beneath the dak bungalow to the north, I am inclined to 
refer the flat truncated outline of a hill which confronts the dak bungalow at a nearly similar 
elevation in that direction. 
The difficulty of always satisfactorily determining the upper limits to which glaciers 
have reached arises from the paucity of moraine debris, and erratics in such situations, espe¬ 
cially where the ground has been steeply carved out as near Kangra; whilst the precise lower 
limits of glacier erosion are not uncommonly obscured by the subsidence in mass of the 
moraine, pari passu, with the subsequent fluviatile and non-glacier erosion which has lat¬ 
terly supervened. 
The third division, of postglacier erosion, calls for brief remark. Its area is freely covered 
by moraine debris and erratics, which, in the case of the large fragments, have simply 
subsided pari passu with that denudation which has removed the base whereon they rested. 
A very neat illustration of this process is seen in the bed of the stream beneath the road 
near the dak bungalow. The river takes a sharp bend round a sort of promontory sharply 
cut out of the old plateau in which the present river has excavated its bed, and above which 
the old glaciers passed at a higher level. The true character of the linear trains of boulders 
here seen, and the fact that they are moraines subsided in situ, are clearly shown. These linos 
of boulders evidently stretched down, quite irrespective of the present river, over ground, 
now represented merely by the narrow spit left by the river. On this spit the boulders are 
seen to rest, and if it might he possible for the stream to have imparted the linear arrange¬ 
ment to these trains of huge boulders, it is obviously beyond the power of water to have 
washed them up against the face of the spit in the manner in which they occur. 
A few words may not here be out of place touching the views held by Dr. Falconer 
Dr. Falconer on the absence of on the causes which have acted towards the conservation 
takes south of the Himalayas. 0 f lakes in the Alps, and the probable reason of the non¬ 
existence of any lakes of similar magnitude along the vastly more colossal Himalayan range, 
where their presence might not unnaturally he looked for on a scale of even greater mag¬ 
nitude than iu the neighbourhood of the Alps; since the glacial phenomena previously 
described by me go far to invalidate the conclusions which Dr. Falconer, in ignorance of the 
former existence of the phenomena in question, was led to draw. Dr. Falconer, writing on this 
subject, regards the Alpine lakes (Falc. Palseont. Memoirs, Yol. II, page 651) as great 
fissuros with rivers running into them, which originated in the process of elevation of 
the whole chain. Precisely similar results in his opinion followed the elevation of the 
Himalayas, hut in the Alps a glacial period supervened, which filling these ‘fissures’ or lake 
basins with ice, prevented their being choked up with detritus, as would have happened 
under milder climatal conditions. For Iudia, on the other hand, “ these lake basins were 
gradually silted up by enormous boulders and alluvium of every kind,” since in these 
“ tropical regions the ice never descended from the highest summits down into the 
plains.” 
Views of Dr. Falooner untenable. 
Now, the condition of the Kangra district clearly renders the above view of Dr. Falconer 
untenable, since it is abundantly clear that glaciers descend¬ 
ed well into that outer region, wherein we might expect 
lakes to occur, and it is clear that no material difference existed between the Himalayas and 
the Alps, quoad climate and the former prevalence of glacial conditions over both areas. 
Whether at any period lakes existed within the Himalayan area, comparable with those 
bordering the Alps, may be allowed to remain an open question, which, I am not disinclined 
