272 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



phant, &c. ; it being; now established, that at the Big-bone lick, and in 

 numerous other places at the west, heretofore referred to the drift 

 period, are more recent deposites, such as " valley drift " and Alluvium. 

 M. Verneuil remarked, that he had never met with the fresh water 

 drift, far from the great lakes and rivers of North America ; and that 

 it appeared to him, to be attributable to an ancient extension of their 

 waters. 



GEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



AMONG African discoverers little known to the general public, is 

 Mr. Bain, surveyor of roads in Cape Colony. This gentleman, in 

 the course of his duties, has made some remarkable observations and 

 discoveries in the geological structure of South Africa. He has 

 shown that the oldest rocks form a broken coast fringe around the 

 southern extremity of Africa, and are surmounted by sand stones, 

 which from the fossils they contain, are the equivalents of the Silu- 

 rian rocks. These primeval strata, occupying the highest grounds, 

 of which Table mountain is an example, and dipping inland from 

 all sides, are overlaid by carboniferous strata. Above all these 

 ancient strata, says Mr. Murchison, in his address before the 

 Geographical Society, and occupying, therefore, a great central 

 trough or basin, strata occur which are remarkable from being 

 charged with terrestrial and fresh-water remains only ; and it is in a 

 portion of this great accumulation that Mr. Bain disinterred fossil 

 bones of most peculiar quadrupeds. One of the types of these, 

 which Professor Owen named Dicynodon, from its bidental upper 

 jaw, is a representative, during a remote secondary period, of the 

 lacustrine associates of the hippopotami of the present lakes and 

 waters. The contemplation of these discoveries, has therefore led 

 me to point out to you how wide . is the field of thought which the 

 labors of one hard-working geologist have given rise to, and to 

 express, on my part, how truly we ought to recognize the merits of 

 the pioneer among the rocks, who enables us, however inadequately, 

 to speculate upon the entirely new and grand geographical phe- 

 nomenon, that such as South Africa is now, such have been her 

 main features during countless past ages, anterior to the creation of 

 the human race. For the old rocks which form her outer fringe, 

 unquestionably circled round an interior marshy or lacustrine country 

 in which the Dicynodon flourished at a time when not a single animal 

 was similar to any living thing which now inhabits the surface of our 

 globe. The present Central and meridian zone of waters, whether 

 lakes, rivers, or marshes, extending from Lake Tchad to Lake 

 Kgami, with hippopotami on their banks, are, therefore, but the great 

 modern, residual, geographical phenomena of those of a rnesozoic 

 age. The differences, however, between the geological past of Africa 

 and her present state are enormous. Since that primeval time the 

 lands have been much elevated above the sea-level eruptive rocks 

 piercing in parts through them ; deep rents and defiles have been 



