158 
Records of the Geological Survey of India. 
[vol. IX. 
I will now proceed to describe the main features of the metamorphic rocks along the 
boundary of the Sirmur group, taking sections across the strike at a few isolated points. 
Considerable difficulty must occur in dealing with these rocks, as they have hitherto proved 
unfossiliferous both to Major Godwin-Austen’s and to my own search ; I, moreover, have not 
seen any good instances of the super-position of newer rocks upon them from which an idea 
of their age could be gathered. 
My first section is taken along the gorge of the Jhelum between the villages of U'ri and 
B&ramtuo. The Sirmur rocks at Un have a high dip towards the metamorphics ; the meta- 
morphics also continue with the saute dip within the fault. 
Leaving the red rocks of the Sirmur zone, the first beds we meet with consist of alter¬ 
nations of schists and limestones; the former are either red or green in colour and are 
frequently magnesian, and soapy to the touch ; occasionally some of the green shale bands 
contain lenticular nodulars of chert; the limestone (some 150 feet in thickness) which at 
first alternates with, and then succeeds to, these shales, is dark blue in colour, soft and some¬ 
what earthy, and never crystalline; it becomes gradually fissile, and seems eventually to pass 
up into the overlying slates, but the section is not very clear at this point. After very careful 
search, I could find no trace of any fossils in this limestone. Mr. Wynne, however, tells me 
that on the opposite (right) bank of the river he obtained a few very minute spiral Gastero- 
pods. In mineral structure this limestone is totally unlike either the Nummulitic or the 
Great Limestone. 
Both the limestone and its accompanying shales are but very slightly metamorphosed, 
while they are succeeded by highly metamorphic slates and quartzites, passing in some places 
into gneiss. It appears to me hardly likely that, these underlying slightly-altered beds can 
really be older than the metamorphics; if this supposition be true, the outer series of the 
metamorphics must be inverted, which inversion, as I shall show below, must extend along 
the whole of the Pir Panjal and adjoining range. Mr. Wynne says that the U'ri limestone 
and shale series is very like in mineralogical character to the Triassie beds of Changla-galli 
and other places in the Hazara district, and is inclined to correlate the two. Dr. Stoliczka 
also conjectured that these beds were of Triassie age; oil these grounds, these and similarly 
placed beds to the east have been oonjecturally classed as Triassie in the map, though a 
strong objection to this view is noticed further on. 
On leaving the limestone north of UTf the flaggy slates continue with slight alterations 
in mineralogical character along the Jhelum valley into Kashmir ; they are very thick and 
gritty at Urimybo, where they form almost inaccessible perpendicular cliffs along the left 
bank of the river. They become Somewhat crystalline and hornblendic at Naoshera. There 
are several folds or faults in the section, but the dip is frequently concealed by metamorphio 
action. None of the so called amygdaloids occur in this section. 
Along the river-bed there occur a great quantity of gneiss boulders, forming terraces 
above the present river level. Major Godwin-Austen supposes these to have been brought 
down to the present position by glacier action. The gneiss is not seen in..situ anywhere 
along the road section, but occurs in the mountains on both sides. The gneiss is light grey 
in colour with largeporphyritic crystals of white ©rthoelase.* The gneiss alternates with, and 
forms an integral part of, the metamorphic slate series, as will be more fully noticed in the 
Banihal section. Pebbles of the same gneiss are also found in the streams flowing from the 
Nilkanta Pass, showing that it extends as far west as that point. 
* The Buddhist temple near Naoshera is built of this stone, and not of amygdaloidal trap , as stated by Dr, Bel¬ 
low (“ Kashmir and Kashghar, ” p, 03), 
