President's Address evil 
59 degrees, it changed in February from 48 degrees to 59 degrees, I 
may add that I observed a minimum of 46 degrees and a maximum of 
60°8 degrees at Camp’s Bay during the month of January of the same 
year. 
Regular observations at some of our ports would afford valuable 
material for the study of the ocean currents along our coast, especially 
if they were made in conjunction with a series of analyses of the 
water, for it may not be generally known that there is a considerable 
difference in the composition of the water of the South Polar and the 
Agulhas currents, the former containing one-fifth more solids than the 
latter. 
The recent progress in the knowledge of the geology of South Africa 
refers principally to the Transvaal gold-belt, and especially to the 
conglomerate beds of the Witwatersrand. A complete account of the 
geology of this region was given by Mr. Draper in a paper read before 
the South African Geological Society a few months ago. 
The geologists who possess an intimate knowledge of these gold-beds 
mostly approve of the explanation first given by Dr. Schenck in 1888, 
and consider them to be a remnant of the northern wing of a synclinal 
fold, the higher parts of the tilted strata having been removed by 
denudation, while the axis and the lower part of the fold have been 
buried under the younger formations which skirt the ridge to the 
south. 
There is another portion of South Africa upon which considerable 
light has been thrown by the researches of Dr. Schenck (Halle), viz., 
Great Namaqualand and Damaraland, regions which are separated from 
the sea by a broad belt of desert, while—it may not be superfluous to 
repeat it—the country to the east of them, the Kalahari, does not 
deserve this designation. 
The coast-belt is formed of vast and ever-moving sand-dunes, bare 
and barren chains of gneiss and granite mountains, which are devoid of 
all vegetation, and long, stretched-out plains of stone and sand between 
them, 
Dr. Schenck shows that in this region, which extends from the 
Orange River to the Tropic of Capricorn, not the usual agent, water, but 
the climate of the desert, brought about its denudation. 
Owing to the enormous insulation, the gneiss and granite of the 
mountains underwent rapid disintegration, the boulders and fragments 
of rock rolling down into the valleys, and the sand being transported 
by the wind. This dry denudation is the cause of the present con- 
figuration of the country, it being originally a mountainous region, at 
present buried under its own detritus, through which only the higher 
ridges still protrude, 
