282 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
which the Rothliegende rests. (Frech, 1908: 74.) The Roxbury 
conglomerate, with a thickness of 506 to 600 feet, occurs in the vicinity 
of Boston and is interpreted as a tillite. (Sayles and La Forge: 
723-724.) Then, too, the Lower Permic (Buntsandstein) of western 
Europe is now thought to indicate not only an arid but probably also 
a cool climate. 
The greater part of these glacial deposits is ground moraines or 
morainic material carried by the land ice into the sea. Their wide 
distribution in the Southern Hemisphere clearly indicates that gla- 
ciation there was as effective in earliest Permic time as was that of 
the Pleistocene of the Northern Hemisphere. This Permic glaciation 
caused the development in the Southern Hemisphere of a peculiar 
hardy flora—the Glossopteris flora—of which very little is known in 
the Northern Hemisphere. Of this cold-climate flora the invaders 
and advance migrants arrived in Asia and Europe not before Middle 
Permic time. 
In Africa and India the glacial condition appears to have been con- 
tinuous during early Permic time, and there is as yet no convincing 
evidence here for interglacial warmer climates such as occurred in 
the Pleistocene. In Brazil, however, the evidence appears to indicate 
one warmer between two colder periods, and in New South Wales 
there is evidence of a series of recurrent colder and warmer climates. 
In Africa, in the southern Dwyka region, there is also some evidence 
for interglacial warmer periods. (Coleman, 19084: 360.) 
DEVONIC GLACIATION. 
In South Africa there occurs, beneath Lower Devonic marine strata, 
the 5,000-foot-thick Table Mountain series, essentially’ of quartzites 
with zones of shales or slates, which has striated pebbles up to 15 
inches long, found in pockets and seemingly of glacial origin. There 
are here no typical tillites, and no striated undergrounds have so far 
been discovered. While the evidence of the deposits appears to favor 
the conclusion that the Table Mountain strata were laid down in cold 
waters with floating ice derived from glaciers, it is as yet impossible 
to assign to these sediments a definite geologic age. They are cer- 
tainly not younger than the Lower Devonic, but it has not yet been 
established to what period of the early Paleozoic they belong. 
Elsewhere than in South Africa late Siluric or early Devonic tillites 
are unknown. It is desirable here, however, to direct attention to 
the supposed tillites mentioned by Ramsay and found in the north 
of England in the Upper Old Red Sandstone of late Devonic time. 
Geikie (1903: 1001, 1011) states that this “‘subangular conglomerate 
or breccia recalls some glacial deposits of modern time.” Jukes- 
Brown in his book, The Building of the British Isles, 1911, writes of 
arid Devonic climates, but does not mention tillites or glacial climates. 
