Abstract
THERE is one statement in the interesting communication of my colleague, Mr. T. D. LaTouche, which seems to require qualification. After a tolerably extensive experience of the Himalayas, I should be inclined to say that rock basins are of fairly frequent occurrence, of all sizes from the largest to the smallest, but they are almost without exception filled with stream deposits, and only occasionally can their formation have been due to glaciers; for they are usually found where there are no traces of glacial action to be seen, and at levels to which we have no reason to suppose that glaciers ever reached. In the hills of eastern Baluchistan, where the rainfall is much less than in the Himalayas, rock basins more or less filled by recent surface deposits are even more common, and here their origin by deformation of the surface can generally be established. The same cause probably accounts for the Himalayan rock basins, as there are abundant proofs that the elevatory movement has been far from uniform, and that the variations in its intensity have been both extensive and often extremely local. There are frequent occurrences of surface deposits which appear to have originally been formed in rock basins, but have since been cut into by the streams, owing to the corrasion of the barrier, and we may attribute the absence of lakes in the Himalayas to the rapid current and large burden carried by the streams, in consequence of which they have been able to fill up the basin, and often to corrade the barrier, as fast as it was formed.
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OLDHAM, R. Rock Basins in the Himalayas. Nature 49, 77 (1893). https://doi.org/10.1038/049077a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/049077a0
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