488 Professor E. H. L. Schwarz—The Tygerberg Anticline. 
trending north and the other east, from a point near Ceres village; 
this is what Suess calls a ‘Schaarung,’ and I believe nowhere else in 
the world does this structure show itself in such a simple manner. 
Each range is composed essentially of an S-shaped bend, the syncline 
on the coast side and the anticline on the inner side, while subsidiary 
folds are added in various places, without, however, obscuring the 
general nature of the mountain structure. The central axes of the 
ranges are composed of a coarse grey false-bedded sandstone, the 
Table Mountain Sandstone resting on the outer side on Pal-Afric beds, 
slates, phyllites, and intrusive granite, and dipping under later and 
conformable beds on the inner sides. ‘Ihe age of the Table Mountain 
Sandstone is uncertain, as, with the exception of indeterminable 
bivalves found by Griesbach in Natal and possibly a Patella, no fossils 
have been recorded from the series; the overlying beds, however, the 
Bokkeveld Beds, contain a rich fauna belonging to the American type 
of Devonian species. On top of the Devonian comes another series of 
sandstones, the Witteberg Beds, strongly differentiated from the older 
sandstone series by their yellow and red tints, and the amount of shaly 
matter intercalated between the sandstone banks. The Witteberg 
Beds, although strictly conformable to the Bokkeveld Beds, contain a 
flora which is referable to the Lower Carboniferous, the conformity 
being supposed to be the result of the ocean floor, during the period 
occupied elsewhere with the deposition of the Middle and Upper 
Devonian, having sunk below the area, or rather out of reach of 
deposition of land detritus. The Witteberg Beds usually form a 
fronting range of hills separated from the main ranges by a valley 
occupied with the softer slates and limestones of the Bokkeveld Series. 
On top of the Witteberg Beds come the series of the Karroo system, 
commencing with the Dwyka and Ecca; these either form wide flats 
or a country cut up into small hills or kopjes. 
The main ranges thus tower up to 6,000 feet, rarely to 7,000 feet, 
above plains elevated not more than 1,000 feet, and the abrupt flanks 
have been carved into tremendous gorges or kloofs by the streams that 
rush down them when it rains. The axes are usually fairly even as 
seen against the skyline, but the central ridge is often so narrow that 
the streams from either side have cut back beyond the watershed and 
have thus isolated peaks which assume fantastic, pinnacled, and 
eastellated forms. The hillsides, where not periodically burnt, support 
a luxuriant heath vegetation, the Ei or Heide veld, consisting of a 
large number of sugar bushes, Proteas, and woody Composite, while 
in among these are the beautiful Cape heaths and everlasting flowers ; 
in two districts there are added the noble Cape cedars, Cullitris 
Juniperorides, on the north-west, and C. schwarz, which I discovered in 
the out-of-the-way valleys of Baviann’s Kloof, on the south-east. The 
wildness and beauty of the mountains have called forth admiration 
from every European who has climbed among them, and they have 
been likened from a scenic point of view to the Alps, but from a 
geological point of view they are entirely different. 
The Alps are mountains that have been folded and the folds 
themselves again folded; in the coast ranges of the Cape the first 
stage has alone been reached. The difference is that between an 
