86 
Records of the Geological Hurveg of India, 
[tOL. XIII’ 
j will not. now enter into the description of this series, all the heds have 
proved rich in fossil contents, excepting group 3, which has only yielded a few 
casts of Orthoceras and a few Coi-als, which may he either Devonian or Carhoni- 
ferous. Most of the fo&sils have already "been described by General Strachey, 
and Messrs. Salter and Blanford, It is an nninterrnpted series of beds, passing 
one into the other almost imperceptibly, bnt bearing unmistakable fossil evi¬ 
dence, the lowest bed of which, above the Cambrian slates, contains many of the 
English Caradoc forms, and the uppermost member of which group of rocks 
(the white quartzite) contains true Carboniferous braohiopods. 
5. Break between Carhoniferous and Trias, —The close of the Carboniterous 
series mai’ks a great change in the Himalayan area. The next succeeding series 
of rocks resting on the Cai'boniferous is the Trias, ushered in by its lowermost 
member, the Alpine Werfen heds, •with all its chai’acteristie fossils. In some of 
the sections the contact of the two groups is apparently perfectly conformable, 
but the absence of the white quartzite in some sections, when the dark bituminous 
and micaceous Trias-base rests directly on the Red Crinoid limestone, besides the 
total absence of the Permian group, clearly points to a change of conditions, 
which must have taken place, at least here, after the close of the Carhoniferous 
epoch. The explanation of this must be sought elsewhere. 
6. The Paheozoic rocks of South Africa. —Some time ago I had the good for¬ 
tune to be able to study three great cross-sections through South Africa and 
part of a fourth, namely— 
(1) Prom Table Bay to the Great Karoo; 
(2) From Algoa Bay inland; 
(3) From Port Natal to the Drakensberg; and 
(4) About 200 miles up the Zambezi on the east coast; but this latter 
is made veiy complete by the help of tbe observations of the late 
ill'. R. Thornton, the geologist of the first Livingstone expe¬ 
dition, whose extensive journals were placed in my hands by the 
Royal Geographical Society. 
But one of the best sections, and also the earliest described, is the first,—between 
the Table Bay and the Great Karoo, a distance of about 140 miles. As this one 
illustrates all the features for comparison with our Indian formations, I will select 
it for the puiqDose. 
The lowest rock seen is a gneissic and porphyritic granite, which forms the 
base of the Cape Table-mountain, of the Devils-peak and Lions-rump. It is 
seen in several places along the section cropping up ■with other metamorphic rocks 
beneath a slate formation, containing fossils. This slate formation probably 
represents all the lower palaeozoic rocks. The great mass of it appears to be of 
Devonian age, proved so by an abundant fossil yield. It is very probable 'that 
also the lower palaeozoic formations are there represented, as Hochstetter has 
already hinted at,’ and recent finds of fossils make this very probable.” The 
whole is very much contorted and rolled up, evidently by a side pressure coming 
’ Dr. P. von Hochstetter : Reise der Oesterr. Fregatte Novara ; Geol. Theil., p. 32, 
* H. Vi’oodward: Quar. Jour. Geol. Surv., 1S72, p. 31, 
