LAND CONNECTION BETWEEN AFRICA AND AMERICA 89 



can forms of life, such as Leptoccelia flabellites, Vitulina pus- 

 tulosa, Spirifer orbignyi, Amhocoelia umhonata, Grammysia che- 

 mungensis, Bellerophon reissi, and many others. Following these 

 Bokkeveld Beds come the sandstones of the Witteberg Series (the 

 Cauda-galli grits of North America). And after this the Dwyka 

 conglomerate, a glacial bowlder-clay with a peculiar assortment 

 of inclusions, all of which have been now traced to rocks in situ 

 in the north of the Colony and Transvaal. The whole series is 

 plainly indicative of the existence of a land-mass in Palaeozoic 

 times whose shores ran through the south of the Transvaal and 

 the north of the Cape Colony. The conglomerates in the Table 

 Mountain sandstone in the west show that the land was near at 

 hand there. But after Silurian times there is no evidence in South 

 Africa that the sediments were derived from the west; they seem 

 all to have been derived, as far as the Cape Colony is concerned, 

 from the north. 



Quite otherwise is it in South America. Katzer finds there 

 the most complete evidence for the existence of a land-mass on 

 the east, whence the sediments that now go to form the mainland 

 were derived,^ and this continent existed up to Tertiary times. 

 The long residence of this author at Para and his wide acquaint- 

 ance with the literature of South America make his conclusions 

 peculiarly valuable. In Devonian times the existence of the Lep- 

 toccelia flabellites fauna in South Africa, the Falkland Islands, South 

 and North America, has led many to suppose that the European 

 seas were separated from the waters under which the Devonian 

 sediments were being laid down containing this fauna, by a land 

 bridge; Katzer has called it the Atlantico-Ethiopic Continent,^ and 

 I, Flabellite Land, after the characteristic fossil Leptoccelia flabel- 

 lites. From a review of the Jurassic faunas Neumayr came to 

 the same conclusion as others have come to, from considering the 

 extension of the Devonian faunas. -^ 



Finally, if the bridge lasted as late as the Tertiary period, we 

 must expect the distribution of land animals to have been affected 



1 Grundzilge der Geologie des unteren Amazonasgehietes (Leipzig, 1903), p. 239. 



2 Bol. d. Mus. Paraense, Vol. II (1895), plate, p. 237. 



3 Denkschrijten der K.-K. Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, Vol. II (1885), 

 p. 132. 



