1889.] Results of a Mission to South Africa. 3 



of a volcanic lava flow, owing to the manner in which its parts 

 have been cemented together, so as to resemble a basalt. That Ecoa 

 conglomerate ranges through the Colony ; I have seen it here in the 

 western part, I have seen it in the eastern part at Graham's Town, 

 and it forms the base upon which the series of rocks rest which we 

 know as the Karoo basin. 



Having determined this base for our investigations, we proceeded 

 northward, always, I may say, under the friendly guidance of Mr. 

 Thomas Bain, who, knowing the country so well, saved me many and 

 many an hour of what might have been fruitless wandering by 

 so freely placing at my disposal the knowledge which he had gained 

 in a life-time of work in the public service, and this journey northward 

 brought us ever upon newer and newer layers of rock, which were 

 not in a horizontal position, but they too had felt the effects of the 

 great southern compression which had thrown the slightly-inclined 

 deposits into undulation, so that I may say that south of the railway, 

 which we struck at Prince Albert Station, between Prince Albert 

 town and Prince Albert road, there are at least six great undulations 

 of the rock, that is to say six bends downward, or synclinal folds, and 

 the corresponding upward or anti-clinal folds, so that the folds 

 succeeded each other in a manner that you may describe as parallel, 

 the troughs and the saddles running east and west through the 

 country in the whole of this area south of Prince Albert road. We 

 found no fossils, but I am told that in the extreme east of this area, in 

 the neighbourhood of East London, Mr. McKay has been fortunate 

 enough to find some bones, which I have not yet had an opportunity 

 of studying, in some of the lower beds which have hitherto proved 

 unfossiliferous in the west. This is a matter that may be of some 

 importance eventually, because all the lower part of the series has 

 hitherto been regarded as forming a distinct group of rocks, separated, 

 under a distinct name, but in so far as I can see from the structure of 

 the beds themselves, or from their relation with each other, there is 

 no character whatever by means of which the lower division, which 

 has sometimes been called Kimberley shales, can bs separated from 

 the group known as the Karoo rocks. But as you leave the line of 

 railway towards the east of Mr. Luttig's farm and Jan Willems- 

 fontein, yMi pass bones, and these are the bones of large animals, 

 sometimes to be seen in the roadway, which have been rolled down by 

 the wagon wheels passing over the roads, and indicating animals 

 fashioned in the main on the type of the common European Sala- 

 mander, with comparatively long bodies, large rounded heads^ 

 moderate length of limb, but which vary in length and attain to 

 something like 10 or 12 feet. These animals have been secured, X. 

 may say, almost entirely by the energy and peculiar skill in that kind 



