Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/418

204 or tufaceous, all the evidences which have been obtained sustain the validity of my hypothesis of 1852, that the same physical conditions have prevailed in Central Africa from those days when that remarkable fossil reptile of the marsh lived, which was discovered by Mr. Bain in the interior of the Cape Region, and named Dicynodon by Owen, and considered to be a representative in old times of the lacertine associates of the hippopotami of the present day. Again, it is to be specially observed, that the vast interior of the South African continent exhibits no signs of sub-aerial volcanoes, and, consequently its surface has not been diversified by the outpouring of lava streams nor broken up in recent times by any efforts of subterranean heat to escape. Nor has it been subjected to those great oscillations by which the surfaces of many other countries have, during the glacial period, been so placed under the waters of the ocean as to have been strewed over with erratic blocks and marine exuviæ. For, if South Africa had been beneath the sea during the glacial period, its surface would unquestionably have erratic blocks derived from the high, rocky glacier lands of the Antarctic Pole, just as many low countries of northern Europe were, as geologists know, covered with Arctic and Scandinavian blocks during the same glacial period (see ‘Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains,’ pp. 507-556, with map defining the southernmost range of the south of the Scandinavian erratics). But not a single Antarctic or other erratic block has ever been detected in South Africa, even in the colony of the Cape of Good Hope.

The interior of South Africa may therefore be viewed as a country of very ancient conservative terrestrial character,—a country in which its animals have lived on during a vast length of time undisturbed by those great perturbations which have affected other countries.

It is right to observe, that whilst Dr. Kirk is of opinion that certain small pieces of pottery, which were found with the bones, may be of the same age, it would require more extended and