40 Reports and Proceedings—Geological Society of London. 
RAP OonrtsS AND LROchE DENG TS. 
November 17, 1909.—Professor W. J. Sollas, LL.D., Sc.D., F.R.S., 
President, in the Chair. 
The following communications were read :— 
1. ‘The Geology of Nyasaland.’ By Arthur R. Andrew, F.G.S., 
and T. Esmond Geoffrey Bailey, B.A., F.G.S. With a Description of 
the Fossil Flora, by E. A. Newell Arber, M.A., F.G.S.; Notes on the 
Non-Marine Fossil Mollusca, by Richard Bullen Newton, F.G.S.; and 
a Description of the Fish-Scales of Colobodus, etc., by Ramsay Heatley 
Traquair, M.D., F.R.S., F.G.S. 
(1) The greater part of Nyasaland consists of crystalline rocks, 
which comprise— 
(a) Highly metamorphosed sedimentary beds, including 
graphitic gneisses with limestone, and muscovite-schists. 
(6) Foliated igneous rocks, especially augen-gneiss, derived 
from granite or syenite. 
(c) Plutonic intrusions, usually granite or syenite, more 
rarely gabbro. In two localities nepheline and _ sodalite- 
syenites are found; these are perhaps of the same age as the 
similar post- Waterberg and pre-Karoo syenites of the Transvaal. 
(2) In the north-western corner of Nyasaland is a somewhat altered 
sedimentary series, which forms the Mafingi Hills. It consists of 
a thick accumulation of quartzites, grits, and sandstones of pre- 
Karoo age. 
(3) The Karoo System is represented both in the north and in the 
south of Nyasaland; in the north it occurs in patches, which owe 
their preservation to faulting. It has afforded remains of freshwater 
lamellibranchs (Paleomutela), fish-scales (Colobodus), and species of 
Glossopteris. 
(4) Recent lacustrine marls and sands are found at great heights 
above the present level of the lake, and as much as 15 miles away 
from its margin. 
(5) Pumiceous tuffs, associated with recent gravels containing 
pebbles of Tertiary lava, are found in the extreme north of the 
country; across the border, in German East Africa, Tertiary and 
recent lavas and tuffs are widely distributed. 
(6) Nyasaland consists of high plateaux rising irregularly one above 
the other. The Nyika and Vipya plateaux were doubtless at one time 
continuous as ‘‘a platform of erosion’’, which originated after the 
main faulting of the Karoo in Northern Nyasaland, and before the 
formation of the great Nyasa fault trough. 
2. ‘*The Faunal Succession of the Upper Bernician.” By Stanley 
Smith, M.Sc., F.G.8. 
The Bernician Series forms the upper and by far the larger division 
of the Lower Carboniferous sequence of Northumberland, and covers 
the greater part of the county. Below the Bernician lie the Tuedian 
