Page:South African Geology - Schwarz - 1912.djvu/9



I have endeavoured in this little book to give a short resume of geology from a South African standpoint. A volume of this sort has long been wanted, and it has not been written before because it was necessary that the writer should have a first-hand knowledge of South African geology, and also experience of the difficulties that beset the South African student in interpreting geological nomenclature. The climax was reached when, in a class lecture, I said that in the desert springs have no brooks: I was greeted with a shout of laughter. It took me a long time to see the point; but once seen I sat down and proceeded to write the present volume. Brooks are unknown in South Africa; if a spring does happen to come out of the ground, its water is carefully led away by a furrow into a dam or on to irrigated land, or it trickles away and is lost in the sand. The only brooks that the South African student knows of are the Dutch equivalent for trousers. I have, therefore, tried to express in phraseology that is familiar to the South African student the main facts about the science. I have been tormented by two factors which have proved very troublesome. The first was that the size of the volume had to be reasonably small, and a hundred-and-one subjects lured me on to write prodigiously upon them; the second was that the book had to be orthodox, for college students who are supposed to read this work in preparation for their examinations are faced with external examiners, whose limitations I know, for I was one myself when on the Geological Survey. I have, however, put in some material which is still on the side of unrighteousness; for