220 THE STORY OF THE MOUNTAINS
subsequently upheaved, form the Kashmir rocks of the present day.
It is not until we come to the almost medieval period corresponding to the Coal Measures, about twenty million years ago, that the record of land life in Kashmir begins.
In the hill-sides behind Khunmuy, a little village about ten miles east of Srinagar, there is a series of rocks lying in layers over the older “trap” rocks of voleanic origin which form the great bulk of the neighbouring mountains, and in these sedimentary rocks, in what are called carbonaceous shales, are found some ferns named gangamopteris. They were discovered in 1906 by Mr. Hayden, and they are estimated by him to be “not younger than Upper Carboniferous,” and they “may belong to the basis of that subdivision, or even to the Middle Carboniferous,” that {s, they may be about fifteen to eighteen million years old. At the same place, but on a layer of later date, have also been found fossil brachiopods—marine shell-fish resembling cockles — also of Upper Carboniferous times.
This, as it happens, was an interesting period in the earth’s history. For there occurred about then,
