K.— BOTANY. 209 



On the other hand, Dr. Fermor, in his Report published in the Records 

 of the Geological Survey of India in 1921, says ' the discovery at Umaria 

 provides evidence of the presence of the sea in Carboniferous time over 

 a portion of what is now the Rewah State.' Dr. Cowper Reed, who 

 described the Umaria fossils, considers that a marine invasion occurred 

 ' in Permo-Carboniferous times,' and adds that there is a noticeable ad- 

 mixture of types possessing affinities with both Carboniferous and Permian 

 species. The Umaria beds furnish the only piece of evidence bearing on 

 the age of the Talchir tillite, from the Peninsula, based on marine fossils : so 

 far as it goes it does not support Prof. Schuchert's contentions that the 

 Ice Age and the Glossopteris Flora are of Middle Permian age. 



We now pass to South Africa : as already stated, at Vereeniging im- 

 pressions of Gangamo-pteris were found between the base of the Dwyka 

 boulder bed and the underlying Pre-Devonian platform. The Dwyka 

 shales above the tillite have yielded Eurydesma and a crustacean,^ 

 Pygoceplmlus : the latter is believed by Mr. Woods of Cambridge ta 

 indicate an Upper Carboniferous horizon. Prof. Schuchert attaches no 

 importance to the crustacean. At a higher level is the so-called White 

 Band, which, as Mr. Du Toit points out, afiords a valuable connecting link 

 between the South American and South African succession of strata. An 

 important consideration raised by the South African beds is the occurrence 

 at Vereeniging of Glossopteris and Gangamopteris with Lepidodendra, 

 Sigillaria, and Psygmophyllu7n , which furnish a strong argument in favour 

 of an Upper Carboniferous or at latest a Lower Permian age. An assemb- 

 lage of plants such as that discovered by Mr. Leslie at Vereeniging has 

 never been found in Middle Permian beds : but Prof. Schuchert definitely 

 states that the tillites which occur below the Vereeniging plant beds are not 

 older than Middle Permian. A collection of plants recently submitted 

 by Dr. Maufe to Mr. John Walton includes species of Glossopteris in 

 company with several forms of Sphenophyllum, Pecopteris arborescens and 

 other plants : comparison with northern floras indicates an age which is at 

 the latest Lower Permian and not improbably near the top of the Upper 

 Carboniferous. The evidence furnished by these and other South African 

 plant-beds is directly opposed to Prof. Schuchert's view. Time does not 

 admit of more than a passing reference to the evidence obtained from 

 South America : this has been fully and ably discussed by Mr. Du Toit in 

 the volume published by the Carnegie Institution. The discovery by Mr. 

 Du Toit of specimens oiCardiopteris in Argentina above a tillite, which lies 

 on a glaciated surface, supplies a weighty argument in favour of the 

 Carboniferous age of the oldest phase of the Glossopteris Flora. 



This summary, though necessarily very incomplete, may enable us to 

 reconstruct in broad outline the closing scenes in the Palaeozoic era on the 

 continent of Gondwanaland. We see an enormous land-region comparable 

 in its mantle of ice with Greenland at the present day : in some places 

 glaciers piled up moraines, and their streams deposited seasonally banded 

 mud and sand ; in other places, from the cliffs of an ice-barrier, were de- 

 tached icebergs carrying boulders that found a resting place in the mud of 

 a sea-floor. In the course of the latest phase of the Palaeozoic era, ice- 

 sheets and glaciers spread from the remote south beyond the equator : 

 lands that are now tropical were then ice-bound. The world was divided 

 1929 p 



