Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/413

Rh near the “Elephant Marsh” on the Shiré, and accompanied them in their slow progress amongst the shoals of that much-obstructed river until February 13th, when he started alone for the Mission Station. Arrived there he found the whole district suffering from famine, and a journey overland to Teté to purchase cattle being proposed, Mr. Thornton volunteered to undertake it in company with the Rev. Mr. Rowley. The privations and exposure to which he was subjected in the toilsome walk over the country to Teté and back, encumbered with the charge of more than 100 head of sheep and goats, seem to have tried much a constitution already weakened by previous over-exertion. He returned to the Mission Station from his successful trip on the 2nd of April. On the 11th, having rejoined Dr. Livingstone on board the Pioneer he was taken ill with dysentery and fever, and on the 21st he died. The Rev. Mr. Rowley, on receiving notice of the critical state of his friend and late companion, hastened to the place where the steamers lay, hoping to find him still alive; but “death,” as he records the event in his journal, “was beforehand with me—when I arrived I found all hands assembled around his grave,” A copy of Mr. Thornton’s Journals, made by his sisters, has been presented to the Society, and will be bound and preserved in the Library. It forms eleven large volumes of MS., and includes, as mentioned by the President in his last anniversary address, “the details of upwards of 7000 observations made to fix geographical points and to determine altitudes” in the Zambesi region. The Journals also contain an immense amount of geological and mineralogical data, the correlation of which will be perhaps an almost impossible task in the absence of their gifted author.—] 

XII.—On a few Fossil Bones from the Alluvial Strata of the Zambesi Delta. By, Esq., Read, April 25, 1864

The following notes relate to a collection of fossil remains found in the bed of a stream which joins the Zambesi 40 miles from the present coast-line, near the head of the delta, and which carries off, during the rains, the surface-water from the plain to the coast.

The fossils occurred loose, mingled with quartz pebbles, and nodules of indurated ferruginous clay, polished and blackened. They had been transported by the rush of water from a little way inland, and were more or less rounded, but perfectly formed whenever the matrix adhered. This resembled the soil of the delta; being a clay mixed with sand, and impregnated with titanic iron. 