10 Professor Seeley. — Some Scientific [Sept. 16 y 



and then fallen so as to dam back the water which led to the growth 

 of those water-loving plants which eventually became what we call 

 bitumenised, then the growth of that matter gives you coal, which 

 must be spread as far as that forest growth is to be found. Hence 

 I have no hesitation in saying, and this is a scientific fact of some 

 importance, we found about the coal on the horizon of which these 

 fossil trees occur, enormous ferns beautifully preserved, as fresh as 

 those we had just seen, with the details of structure perfect when 

 first laid bare, but rapidly dissolving away when exposed to the warm 

 temperature of a room, and we found that, in specimens brought to 

 us from the Indwe locality they were united into a compact mass by a 

 siliceous cement. When I tell you that in the neighbourhood of 

 Colesberg we found forest trees mineralised with silica so that 

 frequently there were many trees lying parallel to each other, all 

 converted into this substance, and when I further say that the record 

 which the farmers gave was that at a few feet beneath these trees 

 they came across a black substance, which burnt — they had no 

 name for it — it cannot be denied that there is a relation between 

 the occurrence of these trees here reserved in sandstone, and 

 those trees which I have referred to in the Colesberg country, 

 which are converted into silica. That connection establishes this 

 fact, that over the country you will find spread a layer of 

 coal, and near that coal vegetable matter, which did not last 

 sufficiently long to permit of its growth to form another layer of coal, 

 of stronger coal, on a higher level, but the occurrence of these 

 silicates, by their obvious character upon the surface of the country, 

 point to the coal which grows beneath, and when we went northward* 

 after having made this travel through this country up to Fraserburg, 

 we extended our course eastward, and set to find as far as we could 

 the northern limits of the rocks which contain the coal. We found 

 we had never anything to rely upon when we got away from the 

 region which yielded our bones, and so, stopping at Aliwal North, 

 one of the most northern points of the Colony, which borders upon 

 the Free State, we had the good fortune to come upon one of Nature's 

 born naturalists, — a gentleman who has devoted his life to the study of 

 living and fossilised reptiles, Mr. Alfred Brown — who showed us the 

 specimens he had collected during some twenty years and took us to the 

 locality from which they were obtained, and these reptiles proved to 

 be several examples of those theriodont reptiles which we could only, 

 compare to the mammalia, and I have very little doubt some of them 

 would prove to be true mammals. They possessed teeth, with all the 

 elaborate modification of formation which we find only in the higher 

 warm-blooded animals which suckle their young, but there were a 

 number of others which I feel sure are reptiles allied to the lycQt- 



