* 
ii Transactions of the Boyal Society of South Africa. 
Kimberley ; E. J. O'Connor, Cape Town; G. French, Cape Town; A. 
Lewis, Kimberley. 
Professor Beattie read a paper on ''Transvaal Sea-level Tem- 
peratures," by Mr. E. T. A. Innes, formerly of the Cape Observatory. 
The object of the paper was to find what reductions applied to 
temperature readings in the Transvaal would reduce them to sea- 
level temperatures. For this purpose a curve was plotted with the 
temperature entered horizontally and the altitudes vertically. This was 
assumed to be a parabola, and the correction was calculated on this 
assumption. A comparison with Buchan's maps in Bartholomew's 
Meteorological Atlas showed great differences. These the writer attri- 
buted to the fact that Buchan had no South African data on which to base 
his correction. 
"Introductory Note on the Geology and Mineralogy of Albany.""^' 
Professor Young described the evidence he had of volcanic action having 
occurred in the Albany district along a line of crystal weakness running 
east and west some miles to the south of Grahamstown. 
He described some investigations he had carried out on some of the 
rocks and minerals found in the neighbourhood of this volcanic line. 
The evidence goes to show that the district is mineralised with gold 
and other rare metals, and that a mineral grease or oil occurs in associa- 
tion w4th the rare metals. 
He also suggested several chemical reasons to account for the failure 
of most South African assayers to detect these metals, while the European 
assayers have found them in several hundreds of samples from Albany 
during the last two years. 
Dr. EoGERS remarked that no evidence of contemporaneous volcanic 
activity during Witteberg times that would stand criticism had been pre- 
sented. Professor Young had kindly given him for examination two thin 
rock slices containing some of the evidence, but the speaker could not 
recognise it as valid. Objects which the author regarded as vesicular 
lapilli the speaker took to be sections through plant fragments, crushed in 
places but still clearly of vegetable origin ; he instanced the shape of the 
cells as seen in transverse and longitudinal sections, the thinness of the 
cell-walls where the fragments were least crushed, and the absence of 
microlites, &c., from them. The non-vesicular fragments the speaker 
regarded as possibly volcanic tuffs with quartz grains, and he pointed out 
possible sources of such rocks from pre-Cape beds in the north, beds 
which had furnished much volcanic material to the succeeding Dwyka 
Series through various agencies of denudation and transport. The 
speaker could not recognise palagonite in the slices. As the author had 
connected the Eooi Kop rocks with the Zuurberg fissure, and regarded 
* The paper was eventually withdrawn. 
