Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/415

Rh others, no difference was remarked when I examined them whilst in the country. The teeth and tusks of the hippopotamus were certainly identical with those of the species now existing in the river.

Similar phenomena were observed on the western shore of Lake Nyassa, which, in shrinking, as proved by elevated sand-beaches, has left clay-flats now crossed by affluent streams. At the mouth of one of these, portions of the frontal bone of an animal and the back of a tortoise were found semifossilised polished and blackened, along with indurated clay nodules, just as on the banks of the Zambesi. 

XIII—On the Antiquity of the Physical Geography of Inner Africa. By,, Pres. Read, April 25, 1864.

We must all regret that the fossil bones collected by Dr. Livingstone and Dr. Kirk, and which the last-mentioned gentleman has described, should be a remnant only of those remains, and other natural history objects, collected by him. His chief collections having been sent by trading vessels to Mosambique, and, not having yet reached this country, it is feared they may have been lost. The geological maps of Mr. Richard Thornton (excepting one of the Kilima-njaro snowy mountain, which he prepared when he was the companion of Baron C. von der Decken), including those which he was busily occupied in terminating when he died in the Zambesi country, have in like manner been sent away in ships, which have not been heard of, though we may hope that these as well as the collections of Dr. Kirk may still be recovered.

The great interest which attaches to the relics saved by Dr. Kirk is, that though they have been so long entombed in argillaceous drift as to have lost their gelatine, and to have become truly fossil, they all belong to the same species of animals which are still living in South Africa. This, indeed, was the opinion of Dr. Kirk, when he placed these bones at my disposal, as being those of a buffalo, a crocodile, and a water-tortoise. With these were quantities of bones of the various species of antelopes and other animals which now inhabit South Africa, including hippopotami. Prof. Huxley also has at my request examined the vertebræ of the fossil buffalo, and he has identified them with the bones of the living Cape buffalo.

On my own part, I may observe that this discovery strongly supports the theoretical view which I put before this Society in the 