Bain in the colony of the Cape of Good Hope. It was, that, inasmuch
as in the secondary or mesozoic age of geologists, the northern interior
of that country was occupied by great lakes and marshes, as proved by
the fossil reptile discovered by Bain, and named Dicynodon by Owen, such
it has remained for countless ages, even up to the present day. The
succeeding journeys into the interior, of Livingstone, Thornton and
Kirk, Burton and Speke, and Speke and Grant, have all tended to
strengthen me in the belief that Southern Africa has not undergone any
of those great submarine depressions which have so largely affected
Europe, Asia, and America, during the secondary, tertiary, and quasi
modern periods.
"The discovery of Dr. Kirk has confirmed my conclusion. On the banks of
an affluent of the Zambesi, that gentleman collected certain bones,
apparently carried down in watery drifts from inland positions, which
remains have been so fossilized as to have all the appearance of
antiquity which fossils of a tertiary or older age usually present. One
of these is a portion of the vertebral column and sacrum of a buffalo,
undistinguishable from that of the Cape buffalo; another is a fragment
of a crocodile, and another of a water-tortoise, both undistinguishable
from the forms of those animals now living.
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