514 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL socruty. [| May 25, 
a portion of the tooth of Hlephas meridionalis. He insisted on the 
complex nature of the forest-beds, which consisted of two parts, the 
lower, estuarine, containing #. meridionalis and extinct forms of 
deer, and the upper, terrestrial, with remains of #. antiquus and 
much altered forms of H. meridionalis, approaching in some respects 
to EH. prinugenwus. 
Prof. Ramsay pointed out the necessity of there being a great 
intermixture of remains of various characters and ages in such de- 
posits as the Crag. If, for instance, Auvergne, which had not been 
submerged since Eocene times, were now depressed below the sea, 
future geologists might find the remains of Miocene animals inter- 
mingled with those of the present day. 
Mr. Ray Lanxester, in reply, contended that the Miocene forms 
of Hipparion, Rhinoceros Schleiermacheri, the trilophodont Mas- 
todon, and other Miocene animals had never been found in the 
Norfolk beds; while Elephas meridionalis had not been found in 
those of Suffolk. His hypothesis accounted for the facts mentioned 
by Mr. Dawkins, whilst Mr. Dawkins’s hypothesis did not account 
for the facts adduced in the paper. The specimen brought by Mr. 
Gunn was decidedly not from the Suffolk Bone-bed, but from over- 
lying beds. 
2. Notes on an AnctENT Boutper-cxiay of Natat. By Dr. Suraer- 
LAND, Surveyor-General of the Colony. Contributed on Dr. Su- 
therland’s behalf by Dr. Mann, F.R.G.S., F.R.A.S. 
[Communicated by Prof. Ramsay, F.R.S8., F.G.S. | 
THERE is largely developed in the Colony of Natal a formation 
which seems to be in all essential particulars identical with Mr. 
Bain’s claystone porphyry of the Cape of Good Hope. This forma- 
tion flanks a long range of sandstone hills, which runs from the 
Tugela river frontier, at a distance of some six or eight miles from 
the sea, across the Umgeni river, and through the Berea hills to the 
mouth of the Umbilo. It also crops out extensively near Maritz- 
burg, and stretches thence, in one direction, over the Umgeni and 
Umvoti to the Tugela valley between Greytown and the Biggers- 
berg; and in the other direction over the Umlasi and Umkomasi 
towards the opposite frontier. In the latter course it goes onwards 
to the St. John’s river and to the further districts of the Cape. 
The deposit itself consists of a greyish-blue argillaceous matrix, 
containing fragments of granite, gneiss, graphite, quartzite, green- 
stone, and clay-slate. These imbedded fragments are of various 
size, from the minute dimensions of sand-grains, up to vast blocks 
measuring 6 feet across, and weighing from 5 to 10 tons. They are 
smoothed, as if they had been subject to a certain amount of attri- 
tion in a muddy sediment; but they are not rounded like boulders 
that have been subjected to sea-breakers. The fracture of the rock 
is not conchoidal, and there is manifest in its substance a rude dis- 
position towards wavy stratification. The general appearance is 
