15 
PART 1.] 
Rough section showing the relations of the rocks near Mukree (Mari), 
Punjab, by William Waagen, Ph. D., Geological Survey of India. 
(Note. —For the information of many who frequent the Sanatorium of Murree, and who may be interested in 
the geological structure of the hills in that neighbourhood, we give the following description of one easily accessible 
section close to that hill-station, the true relations of which have hitherto puzzled many observers, owing to the 
numerous contortions and fractures to which the rocks have been subjected. This one section will, it is hoped, serve 
as a key to others, and the vast importance of fossil remains as indicating the true position of the beds in which they 
occur, once recognized, it may fairly be hoped that greater care will in future be taken, not only in searching for 
these, but still more in accurately establishing the beds from which they have been taken,—a point hitherto 
sadly neglected). 
The deposits on which Murree is built consist of red, clayey slate, with thick sandstone 
layers in it. These deposits are certainly younger than the Nummulitic beds, which de¬ 
cidedly dip under the former. It is difficult to say anything more definite as to their age, 
every trace of fossil (except a few bones formerly found, as I am informed) being wanting. 
(They are probably the representative of the true Siwaliks, further to the east). The 
thickness of this formation is great, but there are so many faults and contortions cutting 
through it that we cannot say how many times the same series is repeated, and cannot, 
therefore, determine its thickness with any exactness. 
The true Nummulitic limestones are cut oil’from this formation mostly by enor¬ 
mous faults, so that it often seems as if the red layers were dipping under them, but in 
other places the superposition over the Nummulitics is very clear. 
The ridge of mountains upon which Murree is built is entirely composed of these red 
sandstones and shales. The next ridge to the north-west, however, is, for the greater part, 
formed of Nummulitic limestone, which, at short intervals, is interrupted by thick beds of 
grey or greenish shales, in some places crowded with Nurnmulites. Even at the lowest portions 
of the red shales, there are some calcareous bands, which contain, but rarely, Nurnmnlites 
and some badly preserved Pelecypods, (mostly Lucina), and Gastropods, (jP leurotoma or 
Fusus), and some fragments of Crustacea. The richest bed of the Nummulites, which is a 
greenish-grey clayey shale, appears to be rather in the upper part of the whole formation, 
while the lower part is composed of more compact, grey limestones, which look exactly like 
Triassie limestone, but which are, for the most part, crowded with organic remains, chiefly 
of undeterminable species, among which a very small Nummulite is prevalent. 
In most cases there is at the base of the Nummulitics a hand of black, coaly shale, of 
not more than from three to five feet in thickness. 
. Below this is a very considerable mass of sandstone in thick beds, outside yellowish- 
brown and of rusty aspect, but blue in color on the fresh fracture. This sandstone is, in 
some places, at least 100 feet in thickness. There are no palaeontological indications of the 
age of this sandstone, but it always occurs in such close relation to the ‘ Spiti shales’ that I 
am inclined to consider it of jurassio age: more especially as Dr. Stoliezka has found, in 
Spiti, similar sandstones, which he calls ‘ Upper Jurassic.’ 
This sandstone, if jurassio, is often the only representative of this formation, the Spiti 
shales, at its base, being so much crushed, that they almost entirely disappear, or they 
assume an aspect quite different from that which they commonly present. 
The ‘ Spiti shales , which follow immediately below the sandstones, are of very typical 
aspect; black shales, with clayey concretions, impregnated with iron. The concretions which 
are not very distinct from the surrounding shale are not very hard, and do not, as is 
the ease in Spiti, contain the fossils. On the contrary, the fossils here are all compressed 
between the single layers of the shales. At their base these ‘ Spiti shales’ show a 
certain amount of transition to the next lower formation by some beds of a calcareous 
sandstone and limestone intermixed with yellowish-grey shales. The limestones then 
i 
