16 
Records of the Geological Survey of India. 
[vol. VIII. 
It is satisfactory to observe that within three inarches of Kashgar there is such a large 
supply of wood, though it is by no means good wood. I have already stated that the entire 
soil is very saline, and it is remarkable to see how snow melts on this saline ground. Thus 
about four inches of snow fell while we were there. In one day all was melted away on the 
saline ground, while near springs, where the saline matter has been gradually dissolved out of 
the ground, hardly any snow had melted. AVhere the soil is most moist or even swampy, and 
in river-courses, high reed-grass is abundant. The southern part of the jilga, particularly 
south-east of Taitma, is lowest, and here a large quantity of pure salt in small cubical crystals 
is collected. The fact that there is such a large quantity of saline matter, together with salt 
swamps in the southern part, seems to prove that this jilga at least and probably most of the 
others had been washed out by the sea, and that while others had gradually, though only 
partially, drained off the saline matter, this one retained it because it has at present no outlet. 
It is in fact a dried up saline lake, which at some remote time was cut off from the sea of 
which it was a fjord. 
Jigda Jilga is occupied by about 150 to 170 Kirghiz tents ; each tent may be taken as 
containing five souls. There are a few fields near Jigda camp, and if there has been a large 
quantity of snow the crops are said to prosper very Well. During the winter the Kirghiz 
are encamped in small groups near the different springs. They do not keep many horses, 
hut large numbers of sheep and goats and a few camels. One whole alcoi is alight load for a 
camel; when packed the blankets are made into saddles over the hump of the animal. 
A third jilga is south of the Belanti pass and north-east of the Nibulak pass. It is 
about eight miles in breadth and the same in length. There are two large water-courses 
leading to it from the range. On the Southern side it is enclosed by Artush and gravel beds, 
hut whether an outlet exists is not known. It has no forest, nor any kind of trees or large 
bushes, and the grass vegetation is scanty, evidently on account of the dryness. A southerly 
outlet very likely exists. We met a few Kirghiz encamped here from Ush-Turfan. The 
only supply of water they had was melted snow, and as soon as the snow-beds about are 
exhausted, they have to retreat with their flocks to the Kakshal valley. 
On the evidences of ‘ gbound-tce ’ in tropical India, during the Talchir period, 
by P. Fedden, E.G.S., Geological Survey of India. 
Since the announcement by Mr. Blanford in 1856 (Memoirs, Geological Survey, India, 
Yol. I, page 49) of the occurrence of deposits supposed to he glacial in formations occupying 
the low lands of India south of the Tropic—those formations, moreover, being presumably 
of palseozoic age—the fact has hardly engaged the attention due to one so opposed to every¬ 
day experience at present. This neglect must, of course, be in a great measure attri¬ 
buted to doubt. Even among ourselves, observers of the Talchir boulder-clay have subse¬ 
quently attempted to oiler explanations of its mode of formation without the agency of ice. 
But this view never obtained favour from those having the largest acquaintance with the 
deposits in question, who have confidently looked forward to the confirmation of the judg¬ 
ment given by Mr. Blanford. 
Although it had been pointed out from the first, that the mode of ice-action involved 
was of a kind in which striation would be the exception rather than the rule, still, striation 
was almost the only independent testimony to be looked for in confirmation of the general 
evidence. The boulder-bed had no resemblance to the till, or the deep-moraine, of a conti¬ 
nental ice-sheet, except perhaps that the fine greenish silt so frequently forming the matrix 
of the boulder-bed has a great similarity to the well-known glacial mud. It was equally 
