Fauna and Stratigraphy of the Stormbefg Series. -473 



while du Toit has collected and recorded rnudstones from the Red 

 Beds carrying worm-tracks, and the South African Museum possesses 

 examples of large Dinosaur tracks from Morija, Basutoland. 



There is a pronounced tendency for the sandstones to become finer 

 in grain towards the top of the series. The author found in Herschel, 

 near the head of Bamboes Spruit, a local development near the top 

 of the Red Beds of a rock which has the appearance of being an 

 ancient silcrete or surface qiiartzite; and from a slightly lower hori- 

 zon a slightly reddish quartzite pebble was obtained, about an inch 

 lone, wicli looked like a "dreikanter" whose edges had been some- 



O ' c 1 



what rounded. Save for occasional silicified logs fossil plants are all 

 but absent (Tlilnnfeldia and Hchizoneura occur sparingly each having 

 been found hitherto at one locality only); and the fauna is entirely 

 a land one. Here it might be remarked that Toniliuson states "No 

 actual remnants of organic matter are reported to have been found 

 in red strata" - the tendency of organic matter is to turn red into 

 green. It is not known whether this statement still holds good for 

 America; but in the Red Beds of the Stormberg Series all the fossil 

 reptiles, with the exception of some large bones from the base, have 

 come from red clays and line-grained soft felspatbic red sandstones. 

 In most cases the bones are found disarticulated : but at Blikana in 

 Herschel, to mention one instance, a complete articulated skeleton 

 of the smallish form Massospondylus harriesi was found lying on its 

 side in red strata. The red muds especially are occasionally spotted, 

 somewhat sparsely, with green; and bones from Fouriesburg, O. F. S. 

 are surrounded by a thin layer of greenish rock; but there can be 

 no doubt the green colour is due to subsequent reduction of the 

 iron oxide by the agency of animal matter after deposition. 



Moody (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 1905), discussing the variegation 

 in colour of the Keuper Marls in England, considers mainly on 



chemical grounds that "the variegation of marls is not to be 

 explained by the assumption that bleaching of the red rock has 

 occurred through reduction of ferric oxide and the loss of iron"; and 

 he considers that the even distribution of ferric oxide in the' English 

 Triassic rocks is probably due to the action of chalybeate waters 

 permeating the whole of the sandstone and part of the overlying 

 marls. However, the intense colouring of the mudstones as well as 

 the sandstones of the Red Beds of the Stormberg Series and the 

 occasional association of green with fossil bones renders this theory 

 a somewhat improbable one to account for the colouration in 

 South Africa. 



Microscopic study of the liner-grained sandstomes shows that the 



