248 Mr. R. Bullen Newton on some 
these facts, it would seem possible that this African formation, 
with its freshwater assemblage of organisms, would appear 
to favour a correlation with the Intertrappean beds of India, 
and consequently would be Upper Cretaceous. Such a 
result is in support of the now generally received view of the 
existence of a land-connexion between India and Africa 
during the Cretaceous epoch. Moreover, palzeontological 
researches support the theory of such a land-surface being 
continuous from Upper Paleozoic times, and so uniting 
Australia, India, Madagascar, Africa, and America—a stretch 
of territory known as Gondwana Land, which has yielded the 
celebrated Glossopteris flora*. At the close of the Cretaceous 
epoch this great land-area was broken up, and finally became 
submerged by the invasion of the Tertiary Sea f. 
CONCLUSIONS. 
This chalcedonized rock from Matabeleland is mentioned 
by Mr. Maufe as occurring in a peneplain of Upper Karroo 
Beds and at the base of Pleistocene deposits known as the 
Kalahari Sands, which in this region of Africa mostly cover 
the basalts and the other underlying formations. Dr. Pas- 
sarge t has described similar rocks to the south in the 
Kalahari country under the group-name of “ Botletle Schich- 
ten,” and later Mr. G. W. Lamplugh§ recognized the same 
deposits in the Batoka Gorge of the Zambesi River, and 
termed them ‘‘ Chalcedonic Quartzite.”’? No definite geolo- 
gical age has been assigned to this formation, on account of 
the absence of paleontological evidence, although Dr. Passarge 
has attempted a divisional sequence of the beds as they occur 
in the Kalahari Desert, involving certain climatal conditions, 
the oldest of the beds being regarded as Hocene. 
It is important also to again mention the presence of 
similar beds made known to us under the name of “ Surface 
Quartzites”? by Dr. A. W. Rogers, containing both Chara 
and Limnea, occurring in the South-eastern area of Cape 
Colony, thus proving fairly conclusively a contemporaneity of 
deposition with the chalcedonic rocks of Matabeleland, the 
Zambesi territory, and Kalahari. 
It is now suggested, from an examination of the obscure 
* EK. A. N. Arber, “On the Distribution of the Glossopteris Flora,” 
Geol. Mag. 1902, pp. 346-349. 
+ See Mr. R. D. Oldham’s remarks on this subject in his edition of 
Medlicott and Blanford’s ‘ Manual of the Geology of India,’ 1893, p. 211. 
{ ‘Die Kalahari,’ 1904 (Berlin), pp. 196, 285, 648. 
§ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 1907, vol. lxiii. p. 198. 
