1'AltT 2 .] 
Theobald: Axial group in Western Prome. 
85 
At the village of Kondaingzu an enormous thickness of bods is displayed vertical in 
places, or with a high dip west by north. The grits and shales are very regularly intercalated, 
the grits varying in thickness from an inch to a foot. They are hard and of a prevailing 
grey or bluish color. Tho coarser hods are white-speckled,—which white-speckling is quite 
characteristic of the upper portion of the group ;—and a few of the conglomerates are 
coarse enough to he termed pudding-stones. The shales are grey, rarely dark and often 
purplish brown, with a few beds creamy or whitish. Tire section of these beds continues 
well displayed in the stream as far as Kyoungtha, with no material reversal of dip, which 
is generally upwards of 70°, varying between east-by-north and cast-by-south. Before 
reaching Kyoungtha, tho dip becomes much less and the beds are seen dipping at low angles 
in the opposite direction, forming small anticlinal folds, hut these excepted, tho sequence of 
beds seems uninterrupted, though the great thickness would render it probable that a fault or 
two brings in the same beds over again. In this stream I noticed many blocks of limestone 
well rounded, but too large to have travelled very far, but I could not find the outcrop, 
neither was it known to the natives. It did not seem to contain fossils, and though at llie 
time I was in doubt as to what group to assign it, a more extended examination of the ‘ axials’ 
removed all doubt as to its belonging to them. At Kyoungtha the road ascends the Pathi range, 
hut the rocks are not well seen. The prevailing dip is east-by-north, though in some places 
it is reversed. The prevailing beds are grits, thick bedded with rather glazed and rusty look¬ 
ing surfaces, especially where the rock is coarse and conglomeratic, llie wliolo ol the group 
thus far is much indurated and seamed with calcite, though nowhere displaying metamorphisiu 
proper. Directly, however, we cross the stream on which I athi is situated and ascend the slopes 
of the range leading up to Kyeedoung, wo find ourselves passing over a different description of 
rock, much of which is of a distinctly mctiunorphie character. IVhilst, however, in places the 
schistose character is plainly developed, the general impress of metamorphism is essentially 
feeble, and the result ill-defined, and, so to say, spurious. In these softer schistose beds, 
however, quartz veins have replaced those of calcite, which occur in the grits of the opposite 
hill; a peculiarity one would hardly have anticipated, viz., that the silicions grits he veined 
and seamed with calcite and the more argillaceous ones with silica, but I could not satisfy 
myself of any definite relation between either description of veins and any particular zone 
of rocks. A more extended knowledge of the axials, however, shows that, whilst a more 
perfect exhibition of metamorphism than any here seen occurs locally in these beds, such 
portions do not constitute or belong to another group, bow dissimilar soever in character 
they may be, and this is nowhere more indubitably manilost, than where the metamoipliisin 
lias been most marked. Such a case, for instance, occurs in the Illowa stream above 
Yuatbit, where a dyke of serpentine crosses the stream, and in contact with which several 
beds of the axial group assume quite the aspect of a hornblendic schist. A similar case 
on a somewhat larger scale is seen on the outer or eastern fiauk of Bidoung, a huge bill 
of serpentine a few miles from the frontier,—the protrusion of which seems not only to have 
affected the axials in its vicinity, converting them into chloritic and diallagie slates, but liy 
its mechanical action to have caused the great ontcurving or deilectiou which the axial 
boundary here displays. Metamorphism, however, of this distinct character is always very 
circumscribed in its range and not so likely to mislead as the more subdued type, affecting 
a great thickness of strata as in the Kyeedoung range for instance ; but whilst only speaking 
of this metamorphism as differing in degree, I do not consider it by any means established 
that the cause in either case is one and the same; and whilst referring the more local and 
exceptional action to the direct and immediate agency of the serpentine, I think it very 
questionable if that rock has been more than indirectly connected with the feebler and wider 
spread alteration to which the whole group may be said to have been subjected : the serpentine 
itself possibly being nothing more than the extreme product of the very forces which have 
induced the feebler but more widely spread alteration in the beds of this group. 
