Records of the Geological Surrey of India. 
[■vol. x. 
114 
Strong zones of paler grey splintery limestone also occur, and towards what appears to 
be the upper part of the group, the limestone, though still darkish, weathers of a lighter 
bluish-grey colour. Stratification is sometimes most plainly seen, sometimes nearly impos¬ 
sible to detect, and disturbance, compression and dislocation have left the succession obscure. 
Those beds overlying the next older rocks are either unfossiliferous or only contain 
black specks that may have been organic, with occasionally minute sections of discoid fora- 
miniferous organisms, having a single tier of cells arranged as a helix; or else cross-sections 
of another minute form less than semi-circular, with an obtuse angle midway opposite to the 
curved side, subtended by three or four concentric chambers equally divided by a closely set 
group of radial septa. I have only found this form in the lowest beds, and have not been 
able to get it determined. In the shales much higher up in the group are sometimes 
clumps of very small clustered and branched corals with occasionally numerous little Fora- 
minifera} (similar to the discoid form just mentioned) referred conjecturally by Dr. Waagen 
to Rotalina. 
Many of the limestones enclose nununulites, whose sections are generally small in size, 
varying from that of the longest to the shortest diameters of grains of rice or wheat. The 
whole assemblage of organisms in these hill-beds is distinguished by scarcity and minuteness 
as compared with the other nummulitic rocks. 
Westward, the darkest-coloured limestones are less common, the shales thinner and not 
so frequent. Strong grey limestone, weathering lighter, occurs along the Chita range ; still 
the dark shaly variety, with lumpy bands and a few layers crowded with small oysters, 
appears in the more central, northerly, and western parts of the range, also in the Nilab Gash 
mountains beyond the Indus. Yellow ferruginous, magnesian-looking bands are occasionally 
present, and there are black alum-shales in one or two places at the base of tho series which 
may be of an older formation. At one place (Choi), apparently much higher in the group, 
is a lenticular pocket of bright coal and coaly shales, amongst the ordinary dark limestones 
and brown shales. Thin carbonaceous shale also occurs locally between these limestones and 
the Jurassic beds at Chamba Peak north of Murree, but are not constant in that position. 
North of Nilab-Gash, at Pullosi Pass, grey limestone contains casts of large Lucinidce 
similar to those of the Salt Range; and near Shaladetta I found, loose, one of the great 
Gastropod casts (Cerithium ?) peculiar to the Salt Range limestone. These indications are, 
however, too slight to establish any close identification of the northern limestone group with 
that to the south. They are lithologically different accumulations, although they appear to 
be generally contemporaneous as upper and lower parts of the same formation. 
The Khaire Murut ridge is a mass of solid, contorted, grey nummulitic limestone (of 
the same kind as that found in the eastern part of the Chita Pahar opposite), flanked by the 
upper nummulitic group faulted, overthrown and concealed by talus deposits, yet well 
exposed where it forms the western and lower extension of the ridge. The stronger lime¬ 
stone, and indeed the whole ridge, appears to have had an anticlinal structure greatly modified 
by compression and faulting. At the eastern end in the lower ground are some indications 
of the conformable succession of the newer nummulitic group to the hill limestone, and 
again westward at Chorgali* I found the succession and conformity of the two groups dis¬ 
tinctly displayed. (The section will be noticed when writing of this newer zone.) 
Under the conditions of disturbance and dislocation it is hard to conjecture what may 
be the correct thickness of these hill limestones and shales. An attempted estimate carefully 
* A pass infested by robbers in the Sikh times. 
