352 Notices of Memoirs—Dr. G. S. Corstorphine— 
NOTICES OF MEMOTRS.- 
_—— 
I.—Tue Grotocicat Aspects oF SoutH Arrican Scenery. Presidential 
Address delivered to the Geological Society of South Africa by 
Dr. Gro. 8S. Corstorpuine, B.Sc., F.G.S.! 
O country affords readier facility for the observation of the 
geological causes of scenery, though we may regret the fact 
that the facility owes its existence largely to the deplorable 
destruction of a former vegetation. 
South African scenery is striking in its very monotony. Over 
hundreds, or rather thousands, of square miles there is a sameness 
which becomes oppressive, and a want of variety of feature which 
exceeds all imagining. There is nothing stimulating in the landscape 
but its immensity, yet, owing to the limited horizon, that immensity 
is not a characteristic immediately appreciated. The fascination of 
the veld is subtle and elusive, probably because, more there than 
anywhere else, is the charm due to conditions of sunshine and 
atmosphere, factors as essential to the final effect of a landscape as 
the configuration of the earth’s surface. 
The geological constitution and structure are the fundamental 
conditions on which the scenery of a country depends, and the 
resulting landscape is the outcome of the work done by the agents of 
denudation, which are themselves mainly due to the prevailing 
climatic conditions. Denudation working on the original structure, 
finding out the weak spots and gradually carving away even the 
hardest rocks, is the great factor in the evolution of a landscape. 
Whether that denudation is of one type or another, whether its 
weapons are rain, running water, snow and ice, or whether extremes 
of temperature aided by torrential tropical rains are the main 
modifying influences, depends on the climatic conditions. Similar 
geological conditions in regions enjoying different climates are 
subjected to different denuding forces, with the result that varied 
types of scenery are produced. 
In a region such as South Africa, where the same geological 
formations extend from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, and from 
Agulhas to the retreating boundary of ‘ Darkest Africa,’ the 
resemblances in the scenery are produced by the prevailing geological 
uniformity, and the differences are due to the variations in the 
climate. 
It is to the action of long -continued subaerial denudation that 
South African scenery owes most of its characteristic features. 
Geological investigation reveals the fact that long ages have elapsed 
since the main stratigraphical structures originated, and that even the 
present land surface has an antiquity for which any possible 
equivalent in years would convey no meaning to the human under- 
standing, for since the upper beds of the Karroo System were 
deposited only a small portion of the coastal region has undergone 
submergence. 
1 Annual General Meeting, 28th January, 1907 (Proceedings of the Geological 
Society of South Africa, 1907, pp. xix—xxvi). 
