1870.] 



GEIESBACH GEOLOGY OF NATAL. 



57 



with basaltic greenstone. In this locality, but on the Itemani side 

 of the Krantzkop, I found the small traces of organic remains in the 

 shaly bed of the sandstone which I mentioned above. 



Fig. 1. — -Section through the Krantzkop Mountain. 



Itemani Eivep. 



Krantzkop, 3800 feet. 



1. Granite. 2. Aphanitic diorite. 3. Mica- and talcose slates. 4. Table- 

 Mountain Sandstone, with, 5, thin layers of a soft shale containing a few 

 traces of fossils, 6. Melaphyre. 



4, The Karoo Formation. — So called after the Karoos, the im- 

 mense plains of the interior, as they are principally composed of 

 strata of this formation, which has its greatest height above the sea 

 in the Draakensberg range (see Section, PI. II.). The lower part of 

 the land on the Natal side of this range rests partly upon the Table- 

 Mountain Sandstone, but not conformably. The Karoo sandstones 

 and shales occupy the largest portion of South Africa, as they com- 

 pose the whole of the interior, forming the high elevated plains of 

 the Kalahari, the Free States and the Transvaal, as well as the coun- 

 tries to the north as far up as the Limpopo ; they are also to be met 

 with at the Zambezi. As Mr. Tate, and Profs. T. E. Jones, Owen, 

 and Huxley have already so ably described this formation with its 

 fossil contents, little remains for me to say. The dark-grey and blue 

 shales of Pietermaritzburg, containing oxide of iron in great quan- 

 tities, represent the Ecca-beds of the great Karoo. Further up it 

 passes gradually into sandstones of much the same lithological cha- 

 racter as the Table-Mountain Sandstone, with intervening layers of 

 shale, which at Ladysmith, Newcastle, in the Tugela valley, &c. 

 contain beds of coal. Numerous remains of reptiles and plants are 

 described, which come from the Natal side of the Draakensberg ; and 

 therefore the age of these beds may be determined. Mr. Tate regards 

 them as Triassic, whilst Mr. Wyley thinks that they belong to the Car- 

 boniferous period; but as the coal fromTulbagh,in the Cape Colony, 

 is decidedly carboniferous ( Calamites, Equisetum, and Lepidodendron 

 in the sandstone), and the succeeding Karoo formation (which is a 

 freshwater deposit) does not lie conformably on the former, Mr. Tate's 

 opinion seems the most acceptable. Also the same formation, with 

 Dicynodon and Glossopteris Browniana, occurring in India at the base 

 of the cretaceous series, is proved, by a carefal examination of its 

 flora, to be a Triassic deposit. There can certainly not be the 

 slightest doubt that the Natal coal belongs to a far younger period 



