554 Reviews — Br. T. Sterry Hunt's Chemico- Geological Essays. 



least) were of Devonian age, that they did not belong to the Karoo 

 series, and that the latter abutted against them unconformably ; and 

 these conditions are expressed in Mr. Pinchin's sections in the Quart. 

 Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xxxi. 1874, p. 106, pi. 4. 



At Buffel's Kloof the diggings and shaft clearly show that one or 

 more rather thick seams of coal (anthracite) in the underlying 

 inclined beds have been broken and crushed by a fault, and even 

 forced up into the higher fissures contained in the overlying 

 horizontal Karoo beds, which do not hereabouts contain coal. 

 The shales in which the coal is bedded contain " Glossopteris 

 and Calamites." The value of these fossils in proving the exact 

 age of the bed depends on many circumstances ; and, although not 

 quite so good as the Lepidodendron and Sigillaria from the northern 

 margin of the Stormberg, yet Calamites, at least, evidently belong 

 to beds below the Karoo Series, and Glossopteris maybe old "Carbo- 

 niferous," as in Australia. 



Ecca shales with plant-remains in the Eastern Province, and fossil 

 wood on the Pataties and anthracite on Buffel's River, in the West, 

 indicate this to be a carbonaceous formation. Mr. Dunn suggests 

 that there may be plenty of good coal in the covered-up " Ecca Beds" 

 of the Camdeboo and neighbouring hills, to be found by judicious 

 boring ; and, although the exposures now known show only crushed 

 anthracite, not only the crushing, but the metamorphic change from 

 coal (hydrocarbon) to anthracite (carbon) may there be due, as else- 

 where, to local pressure and disturbance. 



The descriptions and sections in this Beport elucidate the nature 

 and relative positions of the Ecca Beds (pages 6-10), and of the 

 lower portion of the Karoo series (pages 10-24), omitting the Stormberg 

 portion, well described in the foregoing Beport, very satisfactorily, and 

 thus add very much to our knowledge of South-African Geology. 



T. E. J. 



BEVIBWS. 



I- — Chemical and Geological Essays. By Thomas Sterky Hunt, 

 LL.D. Second edition. (London, Trubner & Co., 1879). 



THE recent issue of a second edition of Dr. Sterry Hunt's Chemical 

 and Geological Essays, which first appeared as a separate 

 volume in 1875, affords a fitting opportunity for noticing some of 

 the questions with which the author is so well qualified to deal. The 

 work consists of a series of papers published in various scientific 

 journals during the last twenty years, which are now reproduced 

 more or less verbatim, with short introductory notes occasionally 

 prefixed by way of explanation. There are twenty essays in all, 

 dealing with a variety of subjects, most of which may be grouped 

 under the following heads : — 



1. Chemical and dynamical speculations on the early condition of 

 the planet, and on subsequent volcanic phenomena. 



2. History of the crystalline rocks. 



3. Essays in chemical geology not directly related to either of the 

 above subjects. 



