28 rKOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [NoV. 22, 



November 22, 1871. 



Samuel Baillie Coxon, Esq., of Usworth HaU, Durham, was elected 

 a FeUow of the Society. 



The following communications were read : — 



1. Notes on some FossiLs/rom the DETo:NiA]sr Eocks of the "Witzekbekg 

 Flats, Cape Coloi^t. By Professor T. Etjpekt JojfES, P.G.S. 



Thkottgh the courtesy of Mr. G. S. Hay ward, of Edmonton, and 

 Mr. Eudler, of the Geological-Survey Museum, I have had the op- 

 portunity of examining some fossils from the Tulbagh Division, 

 Cape Colony, and wish now to point out the interest they have for 

 South-African geologists. 



They were sent to England by Mr Thomas Hayward, of Witzen- 

 berg, and were found, some on the surface, and some in the shafts made 

 in the search for coal and other minerals on the Witzenberg Flats, in 

 the south-western part of the Tulbagh Division, on two farms be- 

 longing to Mr. Louw, who, I am informed, has gone td considerable 

 expense in his endeavours to develope the resources of the Colony. 



The above-mentioned flats constitute a valley, sharply elliptical 

 in outline, between'the "Witzenbergen on the west and the Schurfte- 

 bergen on the east. It is about 6000 Cape roods long from north 

 to south, and about 1500 broad across the middle. The shafts were 

 made on the Elakte farm, at the foot of the Schurftebergen, at about 

 300 Cape roods from the Government boundary-line along these 

 hiUs. In one shaft, at 35 feet depth, were found hard and soft, 

 earthy, purplish strata, with clay bands, and a hard, mottly-grey schist, 

 full of easts of Encrinital joints and stems. 



In the other shaft, at 50 feet, was soft dark-grey mudstone, with 

 obscure casts of Orthis palmata and Trilobites ; and at 50 to 67 feet 

 similar rock, with casts of Phacops africanus^', Homalonotus Her- 

 schelil, and Spirifer antarcticus, also nodular and disseminated iron- 

 pyrites. At 70 feet the same mudstone contains casts of OrtJiis pal- 

 mata. At 72 feet (in the tunnel) the mudstone contains casts of Sjn- 

 rifer Orbignii and Orthis pahnata, and is associated with fine-grained 

 ferruginous sandstone that has on one of its bed-planes oblique and 

 vertical projections, of concretionary origin, that bear stratifi- 

 cation-lines parallel with the sandstone. Nodular pyrites, with 

 lines of the stratification of the sandstone in which it was con- 

 creted, came from the tunnel, at 35 feet from the shaft. 



The fossils of this sandy shale, or mudstone, prove the existence 

 of the Bokkeveld or Devonian formation west of the Gydow Pass 

 and north of Mitchell's Pass, as indicated by Mr. Andrew Wyley, 

 Dr. Eubidge, and Dr. Hochstetter, and strengthen Dr. Eubidge's 



* For the account of these Devonian fossils of Cape Colony see Messrs. 

 Sharpe and Salter's Memoir in the Trans, Geol. Soc. 2nd Series, vol. rii. pp. 

 203 et seq. 



