Annual Report. 319 



The report concludes by suggesting to the Council, that Mr. 

 Naude deserves the encouragement of the Institution, and it 

 appeared advisable to the Council that one-half of the sum voted 

 should be appropriated to this purpose, by presenting Mr. Naude 

 with a medal of that value. 



In regard to those objects relating to the scientific and econo- 

 mical statistics of tbis country, which it is the professed intention 

 of the Institution to investigate, it is clear that we are entitled 

 to require a longer respite 'ere there be claimed from us any 

 very important result. We can at present do little more than 

 consider and point out the methods by which useful discoveries 

 may be made. But we shall certainly by perseverance collect, 

 in no long time, an interesting mass of information on these sub- 

 jects, from the gradual incidental progress which the attention 

 of our Members and Correspondents allows us to make. It may 

 be contemplated as an effective mean to gain such knowledge on 

 these matters, if we were enabled to provide suitable sets of the 

 more common instruments used in meteorology and surveying, 

 to be put into the hands of correspondents competent to avail 

 themselves of their several uses. And as illustrative of the con- 

 dition of the earth's surface, it will be of use to request from 

 our correspondents, according to some form or outline to be fur- 

 nished to them, the most minute information in their different 

 districts, according as they have leisure to acquire it, in regard 

 to the slope, direction, velocity, abundance, and temperature of 

 streams; the acclivity or altitudes of elevations or plains; the 

 direction of chains of mountains; and the course, inclination, 

 number, and composition of their beds of mineral deposits. It 

 should be well understood that miuute and detailed information 

 as to these matters, even in the smallest district, will be most 

 acceptable. 



The interest of our geological domain increases every day, as 

 it becomes more known. We have various notices of formations, 

 as they are generally termed, occuring to a great extent in the 

 colony, different from the primitive slates and granites of the south- 

 western Peninsula, and the sheets of quartzy sandstone which 

 here overlay them, hitherto generally considered as characteristic 

 ot Southern Africa. That series, known in the Wernerian no- 

 menclature by the name of Transition rocks, " the lower fossili- 

 ierous series," seems to occur extensively distributed. A few 

 of those fossils, characteristic of transition limestone, or other 

 beds of the same series, have reached us. A commencement 

 has in some degree been made, by one of our Members, in de- 

 termining the magnitude and boundary of the deposits. As 

 it is a clas% of rocks which generally has proved of great im- 

 portance, it will be exceedingly valuable to ascertain the precise 

 outline and extent of the space it occupies, and its relations to 

 the older rocks around us here, which seem to dive under it, and 

 the exact nature of its component beds. Its limestones generally 



