30 PKOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Nov. 22, 



line of section crossing these western districts near Ceres, Nor do 

 they occur near Prince-Albert, on the same strike, about seventy 

 miles to the east, where Dr. Atherstone and Mr. Thomas Bain lately 

 found Devonian fossils, close on the trap-breccia of the Karoo, ou 

 their traverse northward from Eiversdale. At the last-named place, 

 however, in the Swellendam district, and about 50 miles to the 

 south, Leindodendron has been found, both by the above-mentioned 

 explorers and others, either in the Devonian schist forming the 

 country generally, or in some patch of Carboniferous rock. 



Some further indications of the geology of the Witzenberg Flats 

 and the Schurftebergen are afforded by Mr. Hayward's speci- 

 mens. The mountains yield a white and red sandstone traversed 

 by quartz-veins and infiltrated with manganite. This is pro- 

 bably the Table-Mountain Sandstone flanking the eastern side of the 

 valley. Quartz crystals and pebbles of quartz, ironstone, and jasper 

 occur on the mountains and over different parts of Mr. Louw's farms. 

 In Plakte Parm, at the foot of the mountain, coarse friable red sand- 

 stone, with black manganese ore, occurs. In Eozendale Parm, in 

 the upper and middle part of the valley, dark mudstone, like that 

 of the shafts, crops out, with Sj)infer Orlngyiii, Orthoceras vittatian 

 (Sandberger), and Homalonotus HerscJiellii ; and sandstone with casts 

 of Sjnrifer antarcticus, Terehratula Bainii, Productus, and some ob- 

 scure fossils, occurs ; also hard, greenish, trap-rocks, with ferru- 

 ginous and siliceous geodes, and a curious rock consisting of pebbles 

 of hard bituminous shale in a dark grey trap. Hnematites and black 

 manganese ores also occur on Eabie and Flakte Farms. 



DiscrssioN. 



Mr. GoDWiN-AtrsTEN remarked that the presumed Devonian spe- 

 cies of South Africa appeared not to have been completely identified 

 with those of European origin. Although, judging from the range 

 of European marine mollusca, some of which were found of precisely 

 the same species both in Europe and at the Cape, there was nothing 

 surprising in the extension of any old deposit, yet it seemed unrea- 

 sonable to suppose that the whole district over which the wide- 

 spread Devonian rocks extend could have been submerged at the 

 same time. He traced the original foundation of the Devonian 

 system to the late Mr. Lonsdale, who, in the fossils found in the 

 deposits of Devonshire, thought he traced sufiicient grounds for a 

 marked discrimination between those beds and those of Carboniferous 

 age. Mr. Austen, however, had always regarded the Devonian 

 system as merely an older member of the Carboniferous, holding 

 much the same relation to it as the I^eocomian to the Cretaceous ; 

 and he would be glad to see it recognized, not as an independent 

 system, but merely as the introduction of that far more important 



European coal-measures, and the Lower Ecca beds (his " Lower Karoo Shales ") 

 as probably equivalent to the " Carboniferous Shale," and the sandstone beneath 

 these to the " Carboniferous Limestone." See his 'Notes of Two Journeys,' 

 &c., p. Gl, and Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxiii. p. 172. 



