II.— On the Discovery of the Fossil Remains of Bidental and other Reptiles in South Africa .

Abstract

Plate II. Having been employed, during the last seven years, under the Officers of the Corps of Royal Engineers, in superintending the construction of military roads in the colony of the Cape, more especially on its eastern frontier, and having also travelled far beyond that frontier in a northerly direction, I have had opportunities of observing the geological structure of that part of South Africa; and I venture therefore, although only a self-taught geologist, to submit the following observations to the Geological Society. My principal field of research has been the tract of country extending northwards from the sea-coast of the county of Albany to the heads of the rivers which enter the sea on that coast*. The sea-boundary of this county, commencing about 450 miles to the east of Cape Town, at the mouth of the Boschman’s river, runs in a north-easterly direction about seventy miles, to the mouth of the Keiskamma river. In this length of coast are the mouths of the Great Fish and Gualana rivers, the former about 500 miles east of Cape Town, the latter about fifteen miles further to the north-east. The portion of the tract of country above described which I have examined with most attention, lies between the coast and the northern foot of the Winterberg mountain, whose summit is at the distance of nearly ninety miles from the sea. Respecting the country further in the interior I have also given some geological notices. In this eastern extremity of the colony no