Land Connections of the African Continent 27 



as the results of identical phenomena, but one would not want 

 to unite America with Europe across a North Atlantic conti- 

 nent to explain this. Neither will we be able to explain the 

 present glaciation of Greenland, North America and Nowaja 

 Semlja by uniting all these parts into one continent, because we 

 know they belong to separate and distant landmasses. It is 

 therefore not necessary to unite the different parts of the sup- 

 posed " Gondwanaland " for this reason alone. As to the un- 

 known origin of many of the pebbles contained in the Dwyka 

 tillite, it is one of the most difficult problems to find the origin 

 of the pebbles in the moraines of the Diluvial Age and it will 

 be infinitely more difficult to do so for the moraines of an Age 

 so remote as the Permian. 



One must be very careful in uniting identical deposits, which 

 lie far apart, into vast continents. Those who have seen the 

 Keuper deposits of Germany in Thuringia and the Lystrosaurus 

 Beds of the Orange Free State will agree that the variegated 

 marls especially bring one under the impression that these deposits 

 are identical. Yet it is generally accepted that at the time of 

 their deposition Europe and Africa were separated by the great 

 Mediterranean sea called Thetys. 



There is abundant evidence of the Cenomanian transgression 

 in Africa. Vast stretches of Northern Africa were under water 

 in Cenomanian times, and deposits of this Age have been found, 

 often covering much older rocks, in Cameroon, Angola, Mada- 

 gascar, Kenya and Natal. To these I may add two new 

 localities, the one lying about twenty miles north of Komatipoort, 

 east of the Lebombo and about forty miles from the nearest coast, 

 and the other near the southern border of Portuguese Territory, 

 about ten miles from the Lebombo heights and about thirty miles 

 from the coast. There is in my mind no doubt, that the 

 Cenomanian deposits form a continuous belt from Kenya 

 right down to Natal. The African continent was considerably 

 reduced in Cenomanian times and it is very probable that land 

 bridges which might have existed in previous times between 

 Africa and Eurasia were then submerged. On the other hand, 

 as recently pointed out by Prof. Stromer, the mediterranean sea 



