1889.] Results of a Mission to South Africa. 7 



that wonderful as are the remains of extinct animals which the old 

 world has yielded in its northern regions, and wonderful as are 

 those amazing collections which Prof. Marsh, by the expenditure of a 

 princely fortune, has gathered together from North America, your 

 country, within comparatively a few miles of Cape Town, is capable 

 of yielding to any naturalist, with a moderate and judicious expen- 

 diture of money, treasures in a complete form of the extinct natural 

 history of the country, which are not to be surpassed by any speci- 

 mens in the world. 



But I mast now leave the Saurians, and pass on to some of 

 the other discoveries which we made. On we went towards 

 the north ; we passed through the Nieuwveldt range, passed that 

 wonderful example called the Oude Kloof, and there saw what to 

 me was perfectly new — a range of mountains which were nothing more 

 than a gigantic range of hills — for you are aware that we are accus- 

 tomed to define a mountain, or a range of mountains, as being a mass 

 of rock which has been heaved up from the surface by eompressing 

 force, so that the structure of a mountain range always shows more or 

 less of this plan : — rocks, originally horizontal, have been thrown 

 together so as to be condensed anu hardened, — but in the case of the 

 hills we found that although the contour of the hills might closely 

 approximate to that of the mountains, they consisted of masses of 

 rock, which have not been materially disturbed from their original 

 horizontal position ; they have never been folded, so as to leave the 

 more durable beds in a compressed position. We thus say that the 

 mountain has resulted from a process of compression and upheaval, 

 whereas a hill is due to denudation. We saw this range seventy miles 

 off ; saw it stretching clearly on the hoiizon along the Zwartberg 

 presenting its flat, table-topped hills almost level, with jagged peaks, 

 which bounded the horizon. I found, on coming upon it, that there 

 had been no compression, no thrusting of the rocks at all, but that 

 everyone of the layers which spread over the country we had been 

 traversing was disturbed in comparison with the horizontal position of 

 the beds of rock in the Nieuwveldt range, and this was marked ; the 

 range which was perfectly unbroken, having been riddled and pierced 

 and crossed with spider's web-like interlacings of volcanic rock. The 

 rocks are very little disturbed by the upheavals to which they have 

 been subjected, and there is not the crumpling of the rock to which 

 we are accustomed in Europe. The result is that wherever a dyke is 

 between two superimposed masses of sandstone or shale, it has 

 resulted that in the long space of time in which this land has been; 

 moulded from the original state, so that the tidal waters came to wear 

 the rock down, all the area which had been pierced by the old lava 

 streams became durable, set up in a mass of jagged heads, the pieces 



