Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 26.djvu/712

 a portion of the tooth, of Elephas meridionalis. He insisted on the complex nature of the forest-beds, which consisted of two parts, the lower, estuarine, containing E. meridionalis and extinct forms of deer, and the upper, terrestrial, with remains of E. antiquus and much altered forms of E. meridionalis, approaching in some respects to E. primigenius.

Prof. Ramsay pointed out the necessity of there being a great intermixture of remains of various characters and ages in such deposits 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 intermingled with those of the present day.

Mr. Ray Lankester, in reply, contended that the Miocene forms of Hipparion, Rhinoceros Schleiermacheri, the trilophodont Mastodon, 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 overlying beds.

2. Notes on an Ancient Boulder-clay of Natal. By Dr. Sutherland, Surveyor-General of the Colony. Contributed on Dr. Sutherland's behalf by Dr. Mann, F.R.G.S., F.R.A.S.

[Communicated by Prof. Ramsay, F.R.S., 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 formation 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 Maritzburg, and stretches thence, in one direction, over the Umgeni and Umvoti to the Tugela valley between Greytown and the Biggersberg ; 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, greenstone, 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 attrition 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 disposition towards wavy stratification. The general appearance is