Recent Geological Observations in Cape Colony ¹

Abstract

WHEN Dr. Edward Brown, in 1669, carried the fame of the Royal Society across Europe, and quietly pursued his antiquarian inquiries, he remarked that there were “Wars at that time when I was in this Country, between the Elector Palatine and the Duke of Lorrain.” In a similar spirit, the geologists of the Cape Commission have continued their conscientious work in a land divided and subdivided against itself, merely transferring their activity to the Transkeian Territories, when geological observation became incompatible “with the necessities of Martial Law” (1901 report, p. 4). The course of a struggle which at one time threatened the Empire is referred to as “the military problem”; the serene permanence of scientific work has seldom been more aptly illustrated.