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On the Discovery of the Fossil Bemains of Bidental and other 

 Beptiles in South Africa. By ANDREW Geddes Bain, 

 Esq., Surveyor of Military Roads under the Corps of Royal 

 Engineers. 



The district in which these fossils were found, is on the 

 eastern frontier of the Cape Colony in South Africa, about 

 500 miles east of Cape Town. No granite has been observed 

 here, and the lowest rocks are stratified, and in consequence of 

 the dip, though variable, tending on the whole towards the 

 interior of the country, the lower members of them are those 

 nearest the coast. 



A red quartzose crystalline sandstone is described by the 

 author as the fundamental rock, and as alternating with a talc- 

 ose slate. This sandstone is assumed to be of the carboni- 

 ferous period, vegetable impressions, apparently of a Lepido- 

 dendron, having been found in it, and it is traced by the author 

 towards the west, parallel to the coast, to within 50 miles of 

 the Cape. 



Over this there occurs a rock, called by the author a clay- 

 stone porphyry, containing fragments of the sandstone ; next 

 an argillaceous slate, alternating with sandstone and contain- 

 ing thin laminae of limestone, and at a little distance is a stra- 

 tum full of vegetable remains. 



Further to the north is a ferruginous sandstone with argillo- 

 calcareous nodules, in which nodules were found the remains 

 of reptiles characterised by the author as Bidental, and de- 

 scribed by Professor Owen in the subsequent memoir. From 

 the basin of Fort Beaufort to near the southern foot of the 

 Winterberg range (which is about 90 miles inland) the same 

 beds appear to be continuous, but they are interstratified with 

 beds of greenstone which also occasionally intersect them. 



The Winterberg peak (between 5000 and 6000 feet high) 

 is a flat tabular mass of basalt. Several hundred miles to the 

 westward of the peak a region extends of horizontal sandstone 

 capped on the eminences by basalt, and intersected by numer- 

 ous basaltic dykes. A similar region extends to the north of 

 the peak. Here, again, reptilian fossils have been discovered. 



