Notices of Memoirs — Report on Camdeboo, etc., Coed-beds. 553 



Stormberg. In Natal, at Biggar's Berg, is a seam of coal, eight feet 

 thick, of better quality than the Stormberg coal. In the Transvaal 

 equally thick seams of superior coal are known in the High Veldt. 

 A few outcrops are known in the Free State. Properly directed 

 explorations would result in tracing the outcrops through Kaffirland, 

 Natal, the Transvaal, and Free State. In the higher parts of Basuto- 

 land, and, in fact, along the higher portions of the Drackensberg chain 

 and its spurs, no coal will be found ; the seams do not occur at such 

 altitudes." T. R. J. 



IV. — Report on the Camdeboo and Nieuweldt Coal, Cape of 

 Good Hope. By E. J. Dunn, Esq. 4to. pp. 24, with several 

 Sections and Plans. (Solomon & Co., Cape Town, 1879.) 



THE occurence of two sets of Coal-bearing beds on the N.E. 

 margin of the Stormberg (near Bushman's Hoek), north of 

 Queenstown, — one of probably old "Carboniferous" age, and the other 

 belonging to the upper part (" Stormberg ") of the great Karoo Series, 

 — was indicated in the Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 1871, vol. xxvii. p. 52; 

 and, though the Report above noticed does not support that view, 

 something like it is now proved to be the case at about 150 miles 

 W. by S. from Queenstown. Mr. Dunn has found an exposure 

 (inlier) of some underlying coal-bearing (anthracitic) strata, distinct 

 from the surrounding and unconformable Karoo Beds, at Buff el's 

 Kloof, on a spur of the Camdeboo Mountains, between G-raaf-Beinet 

 and Beaufort West ; and again at Brandewyn's Gat, by the Leeuwe 

 Biver, on a spur of the Nieuwveldt, 36 miles N. W. of Beaufort West, 

 and 100 miles W. of Buff el's Kloof. By making careful sections of 

 the strata between Beaufort and Graaf-Reinet, and by examining the 

 sections opened out by the new railway running S.W. from Beaufort, 

 across the Dwyka, Bloed, and Buffel's Rivers and the Wittenberg- 

 range, Mr. Dunn has fully explained the relation of the horizontal 

 Karoo series as unconformable to the underlying tilted, folded, and 

 broken " Ecca Beds," with their inclosed and conformable " Dwyka 

 Conglomerate " (Dunn). This remarkable rock, once thought to be 

 of igneous origin ("Trap-breccia," etc.), is now known to be com- 

 posed of dense sandy mudstone and blocks, and to be probably of 

 glacial origin. Having thus successfully traced these Ecca Beds, 

 from the (Devonian or Carboniferous) sandstones of the Witteberg, 

 with which they are conformable, to the Camdeboo district, Mr. 

 Dunn shows good reason why the inlier of highly inclined coaly 

 rocks under the horizontal Karoo beds there are part of the Ecca 

 group ; and the more so because anthracite and a highly carbonaceous 

 limestone occur in one part of that group of strata near Buffel's 

 River on the Beaufort and Cape-Town line of railway. 



The author, however, is not correct in stating that the Karoo Beds 

 have always been supposed to be conformable to the Ecca Beds. 

 In 1857 and 1858 ('Eastern Province Monthly Magazine,' No. 17, 

 December, 1857, p. 187, and Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xv. pp. 

 197, 198) the late Dr. Rubidge argued that in the Eastern Province 

 of Cape-Colony the " plant-beds of Ecca " (the lower portion, at 



