On the Carboniferous Rocks of the Valley of Kashmere

Abstract

<h3>Abstract</h3> This paper was a continuation of one read before the Society last year, in which the Carboniferous, Jurassic, and Post-tertiary deposits and fossils were described by Capt. Godwin-Austen, Mr. Davidson, and Mr. Etheridge. In this communication Capt. Godwin-Austen confined himself to the Carboniferous formation, which was shown by him to have, in the Valley of Kashmere, a thickness of more than 1500 feet. The upper portion of this mass contained but few fossils, except in one particular bed near the entrance of the ravine above the village of Khoonmoo; but the lowest portion, or Zèwan bed, is made up chiefly of the remains of Brachiopoda and Bryozoa; and a higher stage, though still near the base of the formation, contains abundant remains of <i>Producta</i>. The position of a limestone containing <i>Goniatites</i> is not very clearly determined, but it is probably a member of the Zèwan series. The sections in which the relative positions of the different beds were exhibited were described in detail, and plans and a map were given showing their geographical relation. Mr. Davidson described the Brachiopoda forwarded with the paper, stating that they abound particularly at Barus and Khoonmoo, but are rarely in a very good state of preservation. Among them are several common and wide-spread European and American species, with a few that have not hitherto been noticed. They appear to be of Lower Carboniferous age. In the introduction Mr. Godwin-Austen gave a synopsis of the more remarkable facts brought forward in the paper, and in a Résumé be gave lists of the fossils which had as yet been determined. These were forty-six in number, forty-two of which had specific names, and twenty-two of which are well-known forms; eight are common to the Punjaub and Kashmere, seven of them being also European species. Of the Kashmere list, full half the species are found in British Carboniferous beds; and Mr. Godwin-Austen remarked on the support given to the notion of the approximate contemporaneity of distant formations containing the same fossils by the occurrence of these European Lower Carboniferous species near the base of the Carboniferous formation of Kashmere.