58 



Mr. Bain on Fossil Remains in 8outh Africa. 



This fossil is now in my possession, and agrees, I believe, with Ammonites planu- 

 latus. There are, it must be acknowledged, no sufficient data for determining with 

 precision the age of the formation in which the bidental remains are found. 



Returning once more to the Winterberg peak as a point of departure, and then 

 passing on towards the north, we arrive, after traversing seventy miles, at the 

 Bambus Bergen, a mountain chain in which the most northerly of the feeders of 

 the Tarka river have their source. After a farther distance of seventy miles, in the 

 course of which we meet with detached hills separated by extensive and dreary 

 plains, we arrive at the magnificent Nu Gariep, or Orange river, in whose bed are 

 rounded pebbles of serpentine, steatite, asbestos, agate, and amygdaloid both of 

 black and white colour ; these minerals being entirely different from those which 

 form the materials of the pebbles occurring in the river-beds within the colony. 

 In the country beyond the Nu Gariep, extensive coal-fields have been discovered ; 

 and I have received from the neighbourhood of the Modder or Alexander river, 

 which enters the Ky Gariep in south latitude 29°, the head of a bidental reptile*. 



I propose in the next place to describe an overlying conglomerate and some 

 tertiary deposits which occur in Lower Albany ; after which I shall proceed to 

 notice the detrital deposits of the basin of Fort Beaufort. The conglomerate mani- 

 festly consists of the debris of the red quartzose sandstone, described at the com- 

 mencement of this paper ; the debris being cemented together by oxide of iron, 

 which abounds also in the parent rock. The bed lies unconformably on the sand- 

 stone and clay porphyry above described [see the next diagram'], and has not 

 been observed to the north of the northern limit of those rocks ; but numerous 

 detached portions of it appear throughout the lower part of the district of Albany. 

 It has not been found to contain organic remains. 



Of the tertiary deposits a fine section is displayed on the estate of Mr. Onslow 

 Peche. and is represented in the annexed diagram. 



In this sketch, (1) is the underlying quartzose sand- 

 stone, on which rests the conglomerate (2) ; and at the 

 junction of the beds are three caves (A) , containing ca- 

 pillary crystals and stalactites of alum. (3) is a soft 

 friable sandstone, containing large masses of fossil wood ; 

 and it is covered, first by a calcareous marl (4) and then 



by a shelly limestone, abounding in shells like those still existing on the South 

 African coasts. The last and uppermost bed (6) is a soft calcareous rock, filled 

 with gigantic oyster-shells. I have reason to believe that tertiary formations similar 

 to these extend all along the coasts, and I hope to enjoy further opportunities of 

 examining them. 



Dicynodon testudiceps of Owen. See the next memoir. 



