ward in his _Transvaal of
To-day_ (p. 171) says:--"It will be interesting to geologists and others to
learn that the entire country, from the summits of the Quathlamba to the
junction of the Vaal and Orange rivers, shows marks of having been swept
over, and that at no very distant period, by vast masses of ice from east
to west. The striations are plainly visible, scarring the older rocks, and
marking the hill-sides--getting lower and lower and less visible as,
descending from the mountains, the kopjies (small hills) stand wider apart;
but wherever the hills narrow towards each other, again showing how the
vast ice-fields were checked, thrown up, and raised against their Eastern
extremities."

This passage is evidently written by a person familiar with the phenomena
of glaciation, and as Captain Aylward's preface is dated from Edinburgh, he
has probably seen similar markings in Scotland. The country described
consists of the most extensive and lofty plateau in South Africa, rising to
a mountain knot with peaks more than 10,000 feet high, thus offering an
appropriate area for the condensation of vapour and the accumulation of
snow. At present, however, the mountains do not reach the snow-line, and
there is no proof that they have been much higher in recent times, since
the coast of Natal is now said to be rising. It is evident that no slight
elevation would now lead to the accumulation of snow and ice in these
mountains, situated as they are between 27deg and 30deg S. Lat.; since the
Andes, which in 32deg S. Lat. reach 23,300 feet high, and in 28deg S. Lat.
20,000, with far more extensive plateaus, produce no ice-fields. We cannot,
therefore, believe that a few thousand feet of additional elevation, even
if it occurred so recently as indicated by the presence of striations,
would have produced the remarkable amount of glaciation above described;
while from the analogy of the northern hemisphere, we may well believe that
it was mainly due to the same high excentricity that led to the glaciation
of Western and Central Europe, and Eastern North America.

These observations confirm those of Mr. G. W. Stow, who, in a paper
published in the _Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society_ (Vol. XXVII.
p. 539), describes similar phenomena in the same mountains, and also mounds
and ridges of unstratified clay packed with angular boulders; while further
south the Stormberg mountains are said to be similarly glaciated, with
immense a