26 Annals of the South African Museum. 



In 1867, a paper by Ealph Tate," in which many new forms were 

 described and figured, added largely to our knowledge of the 

 Uitenhage fossils, and this author was led to some remarkable con- 

 clusions from his study of the fauna. He believed the assemblage 

 to indicate a Jurassic age, and stated that he thought it to represent 

 the fauna of the Oolitic rocks of Europe, and to approximate to that 

 of the Great Oolite. It seems clear that in instituting this com- 

 parison, he made use of some molluscan types little adapted to serve 

 the purposes of a critical correlation, and he was at the same time 

 misled by several quite erroneous identifications. He also mis- 

 understood the affinities of the cephalopods and the significance of 

 certain Trigonice which alone might have been expected to form 

 obstacles to his conclusions. It is here scarcely necessary to do 

 more than refer to the curious generalisation arrived at by Tate 

 concerning the relation of these supposed Jurassic deposits to the 

 Jurassic strata of Europe, namely, that the " Oolites " of South 

 Africa 'are the representatives of the whole of the Jurassic rocks of 

 Europe with the exception of the Upper Oolites, and illustrate an 

 intermingling of palasontological types which are analogous to, or 

 identical with, those distributed in successive zones in Europe. 



In his monograph on the Cretaceous lamellibranchs of Southern 

 India, Stoliczka i made some reference to Uitenhage forms. He 

 evidently believed Tate's Crassatella complicata to belong to the 

 genus Ptychomya, and he ascribed Astarte herzogi Krauss to 

 Speyer's genus Grotriania. He further expressed the opinion that 

 Krauss's Astarte bronni might belong to the Cretaceous genus 

 Eemondia Gabb, and thought that in addition to these and Trigonia 

 ventricosa, several other Uitenhage shells show a Cretaceous rather 

 than a Jurassic aspect ; attention was drawn to the great similarity 

 between Trigonia ventricosa (Krauss) and the Cretaceous T. tuber - 

 culifera Stol., from Southern India. While we shall see that 

 Stoliczka rightly recognised some of the Uitenhage forms to exhibit 

 Cretaceous affinities, he was in error in ascribing Astarte herzogi to 

 the genus Grotriania, and, as afterwards pointed out by Neumayr, 

 wrongly supposed Astarte bronni to belong to the genus Eemondia. 

 A. bronni is so distinctly characterised that Neumayr proposed for 

 it the new generic name Seebachia a fact which appears to have 

 been overlooked by Stanton, who in 1897 still tentatively included 

 it in the genus Itcmondia.\ 



One of Tate's Uitenhage species, the so-called Crassatella com- 



* Tate (1). f Stoliczka (2), pp. 286, 294, 315 (1871). 



J Stanton (1). 



