1858.] ETJBIDGE SOUTH AFEICA. 197 



Now, bearing in mind what I have above referred to as having seen 

 in Namaqualand, I at once regarded these inchned quartzites as being 

 the sihcified beds of the ancient series, agreeing, like the silicified 

 gneissic beds of Namaqnaland, vdth the ancient rocks in position, and 

 with the superjacent qnartz -rocks ia hthological character. I was 

 convinced, even in my hasty and imperfect examination, that beds of 

 quartzite, precisely similar to those of Bain's Kloof, &c., rested on, 

 and converted into themselveS; a portion of the inclined Devonian 

 beds ; and that the horizontal beds which Mr. Bain describes as 

 resting on the Devonian rocks of the Bokkeveld, and in characterizing 

 which he uses almost the same terms as in describiag the sand- 

 stone of Table Mountain, are in reality the same strata, the upper- 

 most of which preserve their horizontal character, — the lowermost 

 having assimilated (by silicification) the subjacent beds to them- 

 selves." 



Taking this view, Dr. Eubidge considers that the inclined quartz- 

 ite at Mitchell's Pass is a conformable successional portion of the 

 schists and slates, the horizontal sandstones being of younger age 

 than any of the schistose beds, and extending over them from Table 

 Mountain to Orange Eiver on the west, and to George on the east. 

 On the north the schists are known to be of Devonian age by the 

 fossils of the Bokkeveld ; and the recent discovery of a few Trilo- 

 bites and Spirifers at some spots in the slates of the southern dis- 

 tricts of the Cape (near Cape St. Prancis, at Klein Winterhoek, and 

 near Jeffery's Bay) is considered by the author as corroborative of 

 his view, that the slates of the Cape are not divisible from the schists 

 of the Bokkeveld, but are to be linked to them by the intercalated 

 quartzites described in this portion of his paper ; the schistose rocks 

 of Ceres, Cape Town, and Malmesbury (SUurian and Carboniferous ? 

 of Bain) having generally a similar strike and dip. 



In the eastern province of the Cape Colony, Dr. Rubidge thinks 

 that a similar condition of silicification exists in the Zuurberg range*, 

 although no overlying horizontal sandstones are there seen. He 

 describes in detail a section made by himself and Mr. R. Pincher, 

 along the road from Port Elizabeth to Somerset, which shows the 

 inclined schistose beds intercalated with a band of dark felspathic 

 rock (the claystone-porphyry of Bain) lying conformably on and 

 passing into the quartzite of the Zuurberg on the south, and, after 

 some great flexures of the quartzites, a similar series of confonnable 

 schistose rocks (and a felspathic band) dips from the other side of 

 the Zuurberg in an opposite direction. Similar beds continue with 

 a diminishing dip as far as Yan der Merwve's Eiver, whence they 

 rise again to the north to beyond Bushman's River (at Gower's), a 

 little beyond which the felspathic band appears intercalated with 

 them. The section then becomes obscured until the Karoo beds are 

 met with near Brak River, having a slight southerly dip, and pro- 

 bably abutting unconformably against the schists near Callaghan's 



* See also ' The Eastern Province Monthly Magazine ' (Graham's Town), vol. ii. 

 no. 17 (December 1857), p. 187, &c. 



