82 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 1907 
is the result of crust-pressures that acted in later times: 
in the main no doubt dating from the period of the 
Hercynian movement—that is, in late Coal-Measure times. 
The conglomerate bed is exposed at many places on 
the edge of the coal-basin. The picturesque Buckstone, 
perched high up on the hills above Monmouth, and the 
many masses of rock that strew the fields below it, are 
detached blocks of a continuation of the same bed. 
Thus it will be understood that the conglomerate bed 
is not restricted to an area a few miles in length, and one 
or two miles in breadth; but in the Forest of Dean area 
alone completely encircles the coal-basin, and is continuous 
beneath it. 
The formation presents a striking resemblance to the 
celebrated gold-bearing conglomerate, or “ banket” of the 
Transvaal. Except that the latter is more perfectly con- 
solidated, and carries in the sandy cementing material 
a good deal of iron pyrites and some carbonaceous matter, 
these two rocks,. notwithstanding their occurrence in such 
widely separated areas, are similar in all essential respects : 
they are alike in nature and possibly also in origin. More- 
over they seem to be alike in age, for the sandstones and 
quartzites with which the: “ banket reefs” are interbedded 
in South Africa are in all probability of the same geological 
date as the Old Red Sandstone of this country. Further, 
they are alike in structure, for the conglomerate beds of 
the Rand, like that of the Forest of Dean, occur in 
the shape of a basin; they form a continuous inverted 
dome, the central parts of which are deep underground, 
while the marginal portions forma roughly circular though 
broken outcrop on the surface. Lastly, they are alike in 
this, that both carry gold, though probably in very different 
proportions. 
Very similar gold-bearing conglomerates, possibly of 
the same age, and having, in one region, at any rate, the 
