642 KEPORT— 1886. 



to certain Mesozoic beds near the eastern coast of the colony, and their possible 

 eqimvaleney to some Indian and Australian formations, has been ably discussed 

 by Dr. Blanford, F.E.S. Some Palaeozoic plant remains of real old Carboniferous 

 age have before now been sent to England from the neighbourhood of the Storm- 

 berg, but it is very doubtful if they were really found there. 



Coal in the Free State and Transvaal. — North of Burghersdorp occasional ex- 

 posures of grey and black shales, with thin layers of coal, occur south and north of 

 the Orange River, and then, with wider intervals, in the Orange Free State up to 

 the Sand River, north of Winburg, but without any valuable yield of coal ; and so 

 on to the Vaal valley, where the Walsch runs into it, and further on, particularly 

 at the junction of the Wilge and the Vaal. Hereabouts the late G. W. Stow 

 found useful coal exposed for some distance along the river and its tributaries. 

 The ' black band,' as he called it, is thicker here than at the Sand River. At the 

 latter place he found this band to contain about 18 inches altogether of coal. At 

 the Taaibosch sprint, however, near the mouth of the Wilge, he exposed, under 

 superficial debris, black shales with 15 feet of coal. 



Still further north and north-east the same horizontal Stormberg sandstones 

 and shales extend in force (2,.300 feet thick, according to Mr. Penning, * Quart. 

 Journ. Geol. Soc' vol. xl. p. 663) through the Orange Free State into the Trans- 

 vaal. Here it occupies an area of about 56,000 square miles. Were the coal-seams 

 continuous this would be a grand coalfield ; but the same remarks apply here as in 

 the Stormberg. 



The Natal Coal. — The Klip River Coalfield is about forty by twenty miles in 

 area, and there are other,but inferior, fields. The seams vary from two or three inches 

 to three or four feet in thickness. In Natal, as in the Cape Colony, the coal-seams 

 are compound, being divided by thin shales ; but this deterioration of the fossil fuel 

 is not so general in Natal. In one case (main coal, near Umraki) ' in a total thick- 

 ness of 10 feet 9 inches there is only about 3 inches of parting ; and many others 

 . . . show good workable sections free from earthy matter ' (North's Report, 1881, 

 p. 13). ' The whole of the deposits are of very lentiform nature, especially the 

 coal-seams themselves ' Qoc. cit.). As in Cape Colony numerous trap-dykes tra- 

 verse the Karoo strata, and occasionally the coal-seams have been afiected by these 

 igneous rocks. 



The Ecca Beds. — The Ecca beds (including the Koonap beds, ' Quart. Journ. 

 Geol. Soc' vol. xxiii. 1867, p. 172), underlying the Reptiliferous Karoo sandstones 

 and shales, contain fossil wood and plant remains (ferns, &c.) in both the western 

 and the eastern districts of Cape Colony ; also some traces of coal here and there. 

 The diamantiferous and carbonaceous shales of Kimberley are regarded by Mr. 

 Dunn as their northern equivalent. About 1878 Mr. Dunn found an inlier of 

 highly inclined and faulted coal-bearing strata in the Ecca beds at Bufiel's Kloof, 

 on a spur of the Camdeboo Mountains, between Graaff" Reinett and Beaufort- West ; 

 and again at Brandewyn's Gat, by the Leeuwe River, on a spur of the Nieuweldt, 

 36 miles south-west of Beaufort- West and 100 miles west of Bufiel's Kloof. He 

 has described also the anthracite and highly carbonaceous Umestone found in the 

 same Ecca beds near Bufiel's River, on the Beaufort and Cape Town line of railway 

 (see his ' Report on the Camdeboo and Nieuweldt Coal,' 4to, 1879 ; and ' Geol. 

 Mag.,' 1879, pp. 551-4). 



Mr. Dunn has suggested that coal may be found, by boring into the Ecca beds 

 under the Karoo sandstones and shales, over some hundreds of square miles of a 

 great central basin in Cape Colony (' Report on a Supposed Extensive Deposit 

 of Coal underlying the Central Districts of the Colony,' 4to, 1886). Around the 

 edges of the basin thin leaves of coal have been found in these black shales ; at 

 Bufiel's River with the black limestone ; at Kimberley and De Beer's mines as thin 

 layers and seams of impure coal up to an inch in tliickness. In Natal in these same 

 rocks (well represented at the Foot of the Town Hill, Pietermaritzburg, Dunn, 

 'Report,' 1886, p. 11). These are the ' Pietermaritzburg shales' of Dr. Sutherland. 

 A coal-seam fifteen inches thick occurs at Compensation Flats ; and probably 

 boring near Ladysmith Flats, where these same rocks underlie, would bring to light 

 the thicker seams at a lower horizon than the Newcastle and Dundee coal-seams 



