76 Annals of the South African Museum. 



lll.—EGCA FLOE A. 

 Plates X.-XIII. 

 Text-figure 8. 

 I.— INTEODUCTION. 



The base of the Lower Karoo formation has been described as con- 

 sisting in certain regions of a conglomerate to which Dunn's term^ 

 Dwyka conglomerate, has frequently been apphed. The history of 

 our knowledge of this member of the Karoo formation has recently 

 been dealt with in the Annual Eeport of the Geological Commission 

 of Cape Colony for 1900.* In recent years attention has been given 

 to the occurrence of conglomerates in the Transvaal which are cor- 

 related with the Dwyka conglomerate of Cape Colony and Natal. 

 In 1895 Schmeisser recorded Schizoneura and Glossopteris from 

 Transvaal collieries in beds resting on the conglomerates, and con- 

 cluded that the plant-bearing strata should be correlated with Ecca 

 shales of Cape Colony. Dr. Corstorphine in his Eeport of 1900 f 

 summarises the observations bearing on the nature and age of the 

 conglomerates of Cape Colony and the Transvaal as follows : " The 

 evidence of the glacial action in the Dwyka conglomerates has 

 accumulated to such an extent during recent years that doubt can 

 no longer remain that the rock owes its peculiarities to such action, 

 and that the Ti'ansvaal conglomerates, associated with the coal, are 

 also unmistakably of glacial origin, and, from the fossil evidence 

 found in the overlying rocks, can equally surely be regarded as being 

 at the same geological horizon as the Southern Dwyka." 



In 1896 Professor Zeiller \ published an important paper in the 

 Bulletin of the Geological Society of France dealing with fossil 

 plants obtained from the neighbourhood of Johannesburg. These 

 included Glossopteris (leaves and rhizome), a species of Splienopteris, 

 Phyllotheca, Noeggerathiopsis hislopi (Bunb.), and some seeds. In 

 the following year Mr. David Draper § read a paper before the 

 Geological Society of London, in which he referred to certain plants 

 obtained from a quarry 2 miles east of Vei'eeniging, a township 

 30 miles south of Johannesburg. He expressed the opinion that 



* Corstorphine (00). f Corstorphine (00), p. 17. 



+ Zeiller (%). § Draper (97). 



