When I visited the town of Burghersdorp, Cape Colony, with the aid of a grant from the Percy Sladen Trustees, I was given by Mr. Maasdorp, the district surveyor, some fossil bones which he had collected at a locality on the farm Witkop, District Albert. Subsequently, through the kindness of D. V. Kannemeyer, Esq., its owner, I had the opportunity of examining the spot and obtained remains of Theropodous Dermosaurs, showing, as was already perfectly clear from its stratigraphical relations, that the locality lay in the ‘Red Beds’ of the Stormberg Series far above the Cynognathus beds of Burghersdorp, which have yielded so many Cynodont remains.

A year spent amongst the high mountain ranges of the Yunnan–Tibet frontier, where the Salween, Mekong, and Yangtze Rivers have been pinched together till they now flow parallel to one another for 200 miles in a belt of mountainous country averaging about 75 miles in width, enabled me, while prosecuting my botanical exploration, to ascertain a few facts of geological interest which form the subject of the present paper (see Plates V and VI and Figs. 1–4). The Tibetans of Kham, with more eye for the picturesque than one would have given them credit for, have, with amazing intuition, appreciated the subtle distinction between a land of high mountains and a land of deep valleys, and in their classical writings refer to Tibet under the name of Nam-grog-chi, which, according to Mr J. H. Edgar, may be translated “the land of deep corrosions”; and this it undoubtedly is.

While mapping the Upper Devonian and Carboniferous Rocks in North Devon I took the opportunity of examining the raised beach of Barnstaple Bay and the deposits resting upon it. As a result of my observations I found that the sequence of these deposits is identical bed for bed with that of Cornwall, South Wales, and Southern Ireland, except that in place of the Boulder-clay there is in North Devon a bed of clay with striated stones which may not be of glacial origin. The position of the Boulder-clay over the ancient head, however, corresponds with the position of the bed of glaciated stones and indicates the infra-Glacial age of the ‘head’. The fact that the ‘head’ is contemporaneous with ‘Coombe Rock’ has been held by all geologists familiar with the subject. It is a fact of first-class importance with regard to the relationship of man to the Glacial period, for it proves that man existed before these Boulder-clays were deposited. The evidence is inferential and supplied by the occurrence of Palæolithic implements of Le Moustier type in the Coombe Rock of Southern England and France. Granting, then, that the Le Moustier period is infra-Glacial, it remains to be seen to what Palæolithic period the raised beach belongs. We will proceed to consider the evidence available up to date, commencing with a brief account of the raised beach of North Devon.

The Geological Magazine for February contained a lengthy criticism by Mr. R. M. Brydone of my article on the Recognition of Two Stages in the Upper Chalk, in the volume for last year. It is certainly curious that he should set himself the task of adverse criticism in such a voluminous fashion when he acknowledges at the outset that he sympathizes with my proposal. It appears, however, that he is dissatisfied with my reference to his work, and that he doubts the reliability of my lists of fossils from the new zones of Offaster pilula and Actinocamax quadratus.