40 
President's Address. 
[Feb. 
na formations beyond tbe Damuda valley, to which they were previously 
supposed to he restricted. A much longer and more important paper by 
Mr. Wynne on the Salt Range of the Punjab would have appeared, but for 
delay in the preparation of maps. All the principal facts and conclusions in 
this memoir had, however, been published previously in short notes con¬ 
tained in the 1 Records of the Geological Survey’ and elsewhere. 
The ‘ Records’ for the past year exceed the ‘ Memoirs’ both in bulk and 
in importance, and several of the papers add materially to the knowledge 
previously existing. Perhaps the most important in their bearing upon 
physical geology are Mr. Lydekker’s and Colonel McMahon’s contributions 
to the geology of the north-west Himalayas. Many circumstances have 
concurred to delay the geological examination of the Himalayan chain, and 
thus it has happened that Kashmir, which, it might have been thought, 
would have attracted the earliest attention from the Geological Survey, has 
remained so long imperfectly known. For what has hitherto been ascer¬ 
tained we are chiefly indebted to Col. Godwin-Austen and the late Dr. 
Verchere, for although an excellent geologist, Mr. Drew, was for years resi¬ 
dent in the country, in the service of the Maharaja, he was 2 )revented by his 
official position from publishing the observations he made, and his oppor¬ 
tunities of examining the country were much restricted. 
Mr. Lydekker has now traced several points of connexion between the 
series of formations determined by Dr. Stoliczka in Spiti, Rupshu and 
Ladak, and the rocks of Kashmir, Kishtwar and Pangi, and has in some 
cases modified the conclusions formerly arrived at, especially with regard 
to the very complicated relations of the metamorphic rocks. There is still 
much to be done before the relative ages of the latter are determined with 
certainty, but it seems clear that gneissic rocks of two different systems, 
distinct both in origin and in period of metamorphism, exist both in Kash¬ 
mir and Ladak, that the slates and bedded volcanic rocks, so abundantly 
developed both north and south of the Kashmir valley, are of older paleo¬ 
zoic age, and although they have hitherto proved unfossiliferous, that they 
must be considered to represent the Silurians of Spiti and Hundes, and that 
all the different limestones of the Pir Panj al range, including the great bed 
of the Jamu hills, are probably carboniferous, like the fossiliferous lime¬ 
stones of the Kashmir valley. 
Not the least interesting of Mr. Lydekker’s observations refer to the 
physical structure of the mountains. He has shewn that the Kashmir val¬ 
ley is a compressed synclinal ellipse, and consequently similar in its main 
features to the area already described by Dr. Stoliczka further to the east¬ 
ward in Spiti and Ladak, although in the latter region newer rocks appear 
than are found in Kashmir, where the highest beds occurring are triassic. 
The Pir Panjal range, to the south of the Kashmir valley, is shewn to be a 
