chap. XVIII.] SIR RODERICK MURCHIRON'S ADDRESS, 485 
South Africa had, like other regions,, been depressed 
into oceanic conditions, and re-elevated. On the 
contrary, in addition to old granitic and other igneous 
rocks, all explorers find cnly either innumerable un¬ 
dulations of sandstones, schistose, and quartzose rocks, 
or such tufaceous and ferruginous deposits as would 
naturally occur in countries long occupied by lakes 
and exuberant jungles, separated from each other by 
sandy hills, scarcely any other calcareous rocks being 
found except tufas formed by the deposition of land- 
springs. It is true that there are marine tertiary 
formations on the coasts (around the Cape Colony, 
near the mouth of the Zambesi opposite Mozambique, 
and again on the coasts of Mombas opposite Zanzibar), 
and that these have been raised up into low-coast 
ranges, followed by rocks of igneous origin. But in 
penetrating into the true interior, the traveller takes a 
final leave of all such formations ; and in advancing to 
the heart of the continent, he traverses a vast region 
which, to all appearance, has ever been under terrestrial 
and lacustrine conditions only. Judging, indeed, from 
all the evidences as yet collected, the interior of South 
Africa has remained in that condition since the period 
of the secondary rocks of geologists ! Yet, whilst none 
of our countrymen found any evidences of old marine 
remains, Captain Speke brought from one of the ridges 
which lay between the coast and the lake Victoria 
Nyanza a fossil shell, which, though larger in size, 
is unclistinguishable from the Achatina jperdix now 
flourishing in South Africa. Again, whilst Bain found 
fossil plants in his reptiliferous strata north of the 
Cape, and Livingstone and Thornton discovered coal 
in sandstone, with fossil plants, like those of our old 
coal of Europe and America,—yet both these mesozoic 
and palaeozoic remains are terrestrial, and are not 
associated with marine limestones, indicative of those 
oscillations of the land which are so common in other 
countries. 
“ It is further to be observed, that the surface of 
