34 PRi':sii)i:xTiAr, aoorkss— sixtiox n. 



I.Aisenfwa valleys. (Jutposts and outliers are presented by -mail 

 patches on the Northern Rhodesian plateau, in the hook of the 

 Kafue. and, still further north, Mr. Studt maps another on the 

 Lualaba in the Katanga region of the Congo. 



As it now remains, the system here is represented by 

 vestiges of a previously widely-extended distribution, and there 

 is no doubt that it formed jiart of that great and ancient continent 

 of Gondwanaland, that is now partly lost under the waters of 

 the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans, but whose boundaries 

 included the whole of Australia, I'orneo, India. East and South 

 Africa, and the Argentine Republic of South America. It is 

 significant to add that the small areas on the Kafue and Lualaba 

 suggest a further extension of the boundaries of the ancient 

 continent, and Mr. Studt describes so well the great escarp- 

 ments that face the Congo IJasin (a feature of some similarity 

 to the Drakensberg that faces the Indian Ocean) that it mav 

 be found that region is but another partly depressed area of 

 Karroo rocks, and that the northern boundary crossed Africa to 

 include the Congo, and so across the Atlantic to Brazil. Of 

 its southern extension none can say at ])resent, but we look to 

 the geologists of the South Polar expeditions to say if the coal 

 known to exist in Antarctica was due to the same continental 

 flora, and whether that great land mass may be considered as 

 another province of (iondwanaland. 



In Permo-Carboniferous times there were two great land 

 masses in the world almost completely -cparated from each 

 other. The southern, in which the (ilossof^fcris flora grew and 

 flouTi.shed as a vegetation, distinct from the northern, was 

 named by Suess Gondwanaland, parts of which I have already 

 referred to. The term is derived from the great series of fresh- 

 water sediments in India to which ]\ledlicott gave the nam-e of 

 Gondwana. 



The long chain of reasoning l)y which this ancient conlineiit 

 was discovered, and by which we know something of its 

 boundaries and ])hysiogra])hy, mountains and lakes and deserts. 

 weird animals and jimgle gnnvth, glaciers and climate, is one of 

 the most remarkable triumjihs of geological research. 



Investigators in each of the provinces named had found 

 that certain rocks there contained fossils of the fern-like jjlants 

 of the Glossopfcris flora, an assemblage of ])lants of distinct 

 characteristics, and remarkably different to the Carboniferous 

 flora of the Northern Hemisphere. ]')rongniart described the 

 first from India in 1828, and recognised similar species among 

 fossils that had been sent from Australia. Feismantel in 1876 

 entered the field, and from that time until 1890 described speci- 

 mens from India, New South \\'ales, N'ictoria. Tasmania, and 

 published his monumental work on the (iondwana flora. The 

 correlation of the beds 0/ these regions was thus recognised, 

 and the Glossoptt'ris-hesinng rocks received much attention, as 

 Air. Newell Arljer's list of literature will show. 



