POST-CKETACEOUS CLIMATES OF SOUTH AFEICA. 



BY 



A. \V. EoGERs, Sc.D., r.E.S., F.G.S., 

 President, 



Director, Geological Survey, Union of South Africa. 



Presidential Address delivered Julij 10, 1922. 



For the second time this Association meets in the pleasant 

 surroundings of Lourenco Marques by the generous hospitahty of 

 our Portuguese friends, and we owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. 

 Seruya, the former Vice-Consul in the Union, for initiating the 

 idea of the invitation. It ixiust always be a specially interesting 

 event to us to meet in this territory belonging to the countrymen 

 of those pioneers in modern African exploration. Prince Henry the 

 Navigator, Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama. 



I must express my sense of the honour you conferred upon 

 me by electing me your President. I have been a member of 

 the Association since 1902, but circumstances have prevented me 

 from attending more than two of the Annual Meetings. Having 

 taken so small a part in your proceedings, though the Journal 

 is well known to me, I am perhaps the better able to record rny 

 opinion of the great value of the Association in encouraging those 

 who have something they wish to put before a wider audience 

 than is to be found at a meeting of one of the more specialised 

 societies. The Association has rendered good service in this 

 respect for the past 20 years, and, judging from the support it 

 receives throughout South Africa, it promises to have a future of 

 steadily increasing usefulness. Another important function is 

 that of giving workers in different subjects and in different parts 

 of the country opportunities of becoming personally known to 

 each other, and of meeting many who are not actually engaged 

 in scientific investigation, but who are interested in it and who 

 are often able to throw light on some aspect of special studies 

 which may be most useful to the specialist. A third object, the 

 most important of all, which we often wish were not so difficult 

 of attainment, is the spread of scientific method in various 

 relations of life. This, after all, is the thing commonly called 

 looking facts in the face without being led astray by our desires 

 or conventions. 



Past Climates. 



Ealph Waldo Emerson was not a scientific man in the narrow 

 sense of the word, but when he wrote " the best part of truth is 

 certainly that which hovers in gleams and suggestions unpossessed 

 before man. His recorded knowledge is dead and cold. But 



