PrqfcsHor Schwarz — Earth-niovements, 8. Africa. 541 



Grahamstown. Hitherto the Alexandria Beds have been regarded 

 as Danian on the strength of the evidence afforded by the Polyzoa 

 and casts of Lamellibranchs, but the well-preserved shells on which 

 Mr. Newton founds his determination of the age of the beds leave no 

 doubt but that this earlier one is wrong. If the beds had been 

 Danian there should be some connexion between these and the 

 Pondoland Cretaceous in regard to the conditions of their deposition, 

 which there is not. In trying to clear the way for a better 

 conception I endeavoured to show that as the affinities of the 

 Pondoland fossils lay with Cenomanian forms from Tunis, the age 

 of the Pondoland Peds was towards the lower half of the Upper 

 Cretaceous ; then the supposed Cretaceous beds of Alexandria with 

 Tertiary sharks' teeth would represent transition beds between the 

 Cretaceous and Eocene. Dr. Kitchin, however, objected to this, as 

 the Pondoland fauna taken as a whole was Turonian, if not Senonian, 

 and the gap between the Pondoland and the Alexandria Beds became 

 so small that there was not time for the undoubted changes in the 

 land to have taken place which would have allowed the deposition 

 of these several formations in the positions we now find them. The 

 Pondoland, like the Ditenhage, Cretaceous beds belong to a period of. 

 sinking in the continent of Africa, at least as far as the southern and 

 eastern portions are concerned, whereas the Alexandria Beds belong 

 to a period of uplift. Mr. Newton's new determination, therefore, 

 solves the problem ; there are many other important considerations 

 bound up in this matter. There is the question of the connexion of 

 Africa and South America and perhaps Australia, in Tertiary times, 

 to account for the distribution of the Proteaceae among plants and 

 many peculiar freshwater fish, for example, the Dipnoi, Chromididse, 

 and Characinidse, among animals. There is also the question of the 

 fragmentation of the Indo- African-Continent, which is the explanation 

 of the straight coastlines on the western side of the Peninsula of 

 India, on the eastern side of IMadagascar, and on the south-eastern 

 corner of South Africa, as on this theory they represent fault-scarps. 

 There is, again, the puzzling problems of the submarine features in 

 the Indian Ocean, such as the level-topped, straight-edged plateau on 

 which the Laccadive and Maldive Islands rest, that has been cited as 

 evidence for the existence of submarine erosion, but which reminds 

 one of a fault-block in Utah. All these points receive new light from 

 the determination of the Alexandria Beds to be of Mio-Pliocene age, 

 and I have thought it of interest, therefore, at this stage to piece 

 together as far as is possible from our present state of knowledge the 

 facts such as we know them in South Africa, and to draw from them 

 a connected account of what movements went on in this part of the 

 earth's crust. 



We begin the story with the deposition of the Cape and Karroo 

 formations, that is, of strata ranging in time from the top of the 

 Silurian to the Trias. The two lower series of the Cape formation 

 are marine, but in the uppermost series, the Witteberg, the Karroo 

 Lake had already been enclosed by land and had become fresh, as 

 witness the large amount of coaly material found in the beds and the 

 delicate stems of the Bothrodendra with leaves attached, which could 



