TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 



705 



On the other hand there are remarkable points of agreement with the faunas and 

 floras of the Indian and Australian rocks. 



Away from the typical Karoo area on the coast south of Natal there is found a 

 series of beds, partly marine, sometimes called the Uitenhage * series. A few 

 cycads (Otozamites, Podozamites, Pterophyllu-ni) , a conifer, and ferns (Pecopteris or 

 Alethopteris, Sphenopteris, Cyclopteris) are quoted from them, and three or four of 

 the forms are closely allied or identical with species found in the Itajruahal beds 

 of India. 



It was at first supposed that the plant-bearing beds were lower in position than 

 those containing marine fossils, and the whole of the Uitenhage series was con- 

 sidered as of later age than the Karoo beds. The marine beds were considered 

 Middle Jurassic. Subsequently, however, Stow • showed conclusively that a por- 

 tion of the marine beds, judging by their fossils, are of uppermost Jurassic or even 

 Neocomian age, and also that the relation of the plant-bearing beds to the marine 

 strata are far less simple than was supposed. 3 Indeed, to judge from Stow's account, 

 it is by no means clear that a portion of the wood-bed series or saliferous series, to 

 which the plant-beds belong, is not higher in position than the marine Jurassic 

 strata. 



There is a very extraordinary similarity between the geology of the southern 

 part of Africa and that of the peninsula of India. In both countries a thick fresh- 

 water formation, without any marine beds intercalated, occupies a large area of the 

 interior of the country, whilst on the coast some marine Jurassic and cretaceous 

 rocks are found, the former in association with beds containing plants. The co- 

 incidence is not even confined to sedimentary beds. As in India so in South 

 Africa, the uppermost inland Mesozoic fresh-water beds are capped by volcanic 

 rocks. 



It has been assumed, but not apparently on any clear evidence, that the marine 

 coast-beds and the associated plant-beds are in Africa much newer than the inland 

 sandstone formation, but it is not impossible that the relations may really be the 

 same as in India, and that the Stormberg beds of the inland formation may be the 

 equivalents of the Upper Jurassic or even the Cretaceous marine beds on the coast. 

 The discovery of plants identical with those of the Jurassic (probably Upper Jurassic) 

 beds of Queensland in the Stormberg series may of course be taken for what it is 

 worth ; it is of quite as much importance in indicating the age of the rocks as the 

 occurrence of dicynodont reptiles in the Permian of Russia and in the lower 

 Gondwanas of India. 



Altogether there is quite sufficient probability that the upper Karoo or Storm- 

 berg beds are of later age than Triassic to justify the protest which I made last year 

 against a skull being described from these beds as that of a ' Triassic ' mammal. 4 The 

 practice, so common amongst palaeontologists, of positively asserting as a known 

 fact the geological age of organisms from beds of which the geological position is 

 not clearly determined is very much to be deprecated. 



I have called attention to the occurrence of boulders in the Talchir beds in India, 

 the Ecca beds of South Africa, and the Bacchus Marsh sandstones and Hawkesbury 

 beds of Australia. The idea bas occurred quite independently to several different 

 observers that each of these remarkable formations affords evidence of glacial 

 action ; and although, in the case of India especially, the geographical position of the 

 boulder-bed within the tropics seemed for a long time to render the notion of ice 

 action too improbable to be accepted, further evidence has so far confirmed the 

 view as to cause it to be generally received. Even before the Australian boulder- 

 deposits had been observed it was suggested that the Talchir beds and Ecca 

 conglomerate might be contemporaneous, 6 and that the evidence in favour of a 

 Glacial epoch having left its traces in the Permian beds of England 6 might 

 possibly indicate that the Indian and South African boulder-beds are of the 

 same geological epoch. The discovery of two similar deposits in Australia 





1884 



1 Q. J. G. S. xxvii. p. 144. 



3 L.c. p. 505, 511, 513, &c. 



4 Q. J. G. S. xxxi. p. 528. 



1 Q. J. G. S. xxvii. p. 479 



* Q. J. G. S. xl. p. 146. 



• Q. J, G. S. xi. p 185. 



Z Z 



