2 
THE MIOCENE BEDS OF 
THE MIOCENE BEDS OF THE VICTORIA NYANZA. 
By Felix Oswald, D.Sc. 
In 1909 Mr. G. R. Chesnaye, at the close of a prospecting 
expedition down the Kuja valley, came across some bones of 
fossil turtles and crocodiles in the low cliffs of Karungu Bay 
below Nira Hill. On his return to Nairobi he showed the 
fossils to Mr. C. W. Hobley, who induced the late Mr. D. B. 
Pigott to undertake a search for further specimens. His 
interesting discovery of part of the lower jaw of a Dinotherium 
in these beds near Karungu has already been referred to in 
this Journal (Vol. II, No. 4, July 1912, p. 109 and text-figure) 
by Dr. C. W. Andrews, F.R.S., who appropriately named 
the specimen Dinotherium Hobleyi, and ascribed a Lower 
Miocene (Burdigalian) age to the strata. Owing to the 
unfortunate demise of Mr. Pigott little or nothing was known 
of the circumstances of his discovery ; accordingly I offered 
to utilise my leave in making a geological investigation of the 
locality and in collecting fossils for the British Museum, and 
I arrived at Karungu at the end of November 1911. In the 
meantime Dr. A. D. Milne had visited Nira Hill, and just 
before my arrival Mr. R. J. Cuninghame, in conjunction with 
Mr. G. R. Chesnaye, had procured several specimens of 
chelonian and crocodilian remains. 
To some extent a disappointment awaited me, for, contrary 
to my over-sanguine expectations, there was no bone-bed, 
nor was there any chance of obtaining complete skeletons, 
for the bones only occurred isolated at wide and uncertain 
intervals and usually in a shattered condition. Moreover, the 
outcrop of the Miocene beds is unfortunately extremely 
restricted, for they appear to view only in a few places along 
the southern margin of a large volcanic plateau, of which 
Gwasi is the central point, rising nearly 8,000 feet above the 
Nyanza. Their outcrop is still further diminished by a thick 
mantle of black ‘ cotton-soil ’ or regur, derived from the decom- 
position of the nepheline-basalt. They are exposed to view 
at the base of Nira Hill and to the eastward in the gullies of 
