500 [Jan. 8, 



reptiles chai^acterised by the author as Bidental, and described by 

 Professor Owen in the subsequent memoir. From the basin of 

 Fort Beaufort to near the southern foot of the Winterberg range ^ 

 (which is about 90 miles inland) the same beds appear to be con- ' 

 tinuous, but they are interstratified with beds of greenstone which 

 also occasionally intersect them. 



The Winterberg peak (between 5,000 and 6,000 feet high) is a 

 flat tabular mass of basalt. Several hundred miles to the west- 

 ward of the peak a region extends of horizontal sandstone capped 

 on the eniinences by basalt and intersected by numerous basaltic 

 dykes. A similar region extends to the north of the peak. Here 

 again reptilian fossils have been discovered, and they have also 

 been brought from the country far to the north beyond the Orange 

 River. Ammonites have been found at the summit of the 

 Compass-berg 150 miles N.W. of the Winterberg. 



The author does not venture to decide on the geological age of 

 the formations he thus describes, but proceeds in conclusion to 

 allude to some overlying deposits found near the southern coast of 

 Albany, one of which is a red sandstone conglomerate, entirely 

 without fossils and resting unconformably on the supposed car- 

 boniferous sandstone : others are distinctly tertiary, and abound 

 in shells resembling those of animals still living on the South 

 African coast. A thick diluvial deposit is found near Fort Beau- 

 fort, and from the plains far to the northward beyond the Orange 

 river the fossil skull of a kind of buffalo has been obtained. 



2. Description of certain Fossil Crania, discovered by A. G. Bain, 

 Esq., m Sandstone Rocks at the South-eastern Extremity, of 

 Africa, referable to different Species of an extinct Genus 

 of Reptilia (Dictnodon), and mdicatiie of a new Tribe or 

 Sub-order of Sauria. By Richard Owen, Esq., F.R.S. 

 F.G.S., &c. ' . 



The most remarkable character in these fossils is the presence of 

 two long curved and sharp-pointed tusks, which, like those of the 

 Walrus, descend one from each superior maxillary bone, and pass 

 on the outside of the fore part of the lower jaw, a character rare 

 even in Mammals, and hitherto only met with in that class ; 

 but in these specimens combined with a structure of the cranium, 

 proving that the animals belonged to the class Reptilia, but were 

 members neither of the Crocodilian nor Chelonian orders. The 

 Lacertine Sauria offer characters for comparison, but the minor 

 deviations from the ordinary Lacertian structure ai-e so numerous, 

 the mode in which Crocodilian and Chelonian characters are in- 

 terwoven upon an essentially Lacertian base is so interesting, and 

 the individual and distinctive characters of the Dicynodons so 



