Reviews — Brief Notices. 177 



and tliereia lie has been able to adopt a definite classification and 

 nomenclature for the strata, which should be applicable to the whole 

 of the Witwatersrand area. The Director contributes a report on 

 " The Geology of a portion of the Rustenburgh District, lying- north 

 of the Pilandsberg ", and Dr. W. A. Humphrey describes "The 

 Geology of the Pilandsberg", a remarkable igneous complex which 

 is considered to mark an important centre of eruption of the elseolite- 

 syenite magma. In addition to the field-work in the Transvaal an 

 area of 342 square miles was mapped in Natal near Vryheid by 

 Dr. Humphrey, who contributes " Notes on a traverse through parts 

 of the Yryheid District and Zululand". There is also a short 

 "Report on the Coal Eesources of South Africa". The maps, 

 sections, and pictorial illustrations in this volume are well executed 

 and instructive. 



2. Cainozoio Mollusca. feom South Afeica. — The importance of 

 careful collecting has received further emphasis from the report 

 of Mr. R. BuUen Newton on some Cainozoic shells from South Afiica 

 (Records of the Albany Museum, vol. ii. No. 5, February, 1913, 

 pp. 315-52 — not 251-88 as in author's copies — pis. xvii— xxiv). The 

 author describes a number of marine mollusca from the Cainozoic 

 deposits of South Africa which form part of the 'Alexandria 

 Pormation' of Professor Schwarz, and are attributed to a probable 

 Mio-Plioceue horizon. Attention is drawn to the fact that this 

 formation was originally considered as of Cretaceous age on account 

 of the occurrence of Melina cf. gaudichaiidi in the upper part of the 

 Need's Camp Limestones near East London. This had previously been 

 described as a Cretaceous shell by Mr. Henry Woods under the name 

 of Perna sp. This form of Melina, however, is proved to exhibit 

 affinities with a South American Miocene shell, while it occurs in 

 other districts of South Africa where the Alexandria formation is 

 exposed in association with forms of mollusca showing a late Tertiary 

 facies. It is explained that the Need's Camp deposits, as first 

 demonstrated by Dr. A. W. Rogers, consist of an upper and a lower 

 series of limestones distant some two miles from each other. The 

 upper or younger beds contain this Tertiary Melina cf. gaudicJiaudi, 

 while the lower or older beds are characterized by Polyzoa, etc., of 

 undoubted Cretaceous age. 



The Berarose collotypes from photographs by H. C. Herring, of 

 the British Museum, are extremelj' good and deserve a word of praise. 

 The combination of a good photograph and a good collotype leaves 

 little to be desired in the illustration of fossil mollusca. — C. D. S. 



3. Water-Sctpplt Papers of the United States Geological 

 Survey.— We have received Nos. 284, 289-91, 296, 298, and 304 of 

 these papers, and they deal with the surface-waters of the St. Lawrence 

 River, the Colorado, the Great Basin, and the Sacramento River 

 Basin, also with the waters of the Pacific Coast in California. Two 

 of the papers constitute a gazetteer of the surface-waters of California. 

 Of more geological interest is the paper. No. 294, entitled " An 

 Intensive Study of the Water Resources of a part of Owens Valley, 

 California", by Mr. Charles H. Lee, 1912. This valley lies in East 

 Central California, and receives its water-supply from precipitation 



DECADE V. — VOL. X. — NO. IV. 12 



