26 THE MALMESBURY SERIES 



black, penetrated by masses of granite and numerous 

 granitic veins. 



Crystalline limestone, slates and quartzites occur at 

 the Maitland Mine a little to the west of Port Eliza- 

 beth. 



Veins of quartz are abundant in the Malmesbury 

 beds. In Van Ehyn's Dorp they have sometimes been 

 broken up by earth-movements and the fragments 

 rounded so as to simulate the pebbles in a conglomerate. 

 At places the veins have been prospected for gold but 

 without gratifying results. 



The general strike of the rocks classed in this series 

 is to the west of north in the western part of the Colony, 

 approximately parallel to the trend of the Cederbergen 

 and the other ranges in the west, which were formed 

 chiefly after the deposition of the Ecca series ; but in 

 the south, between Worcester and Swellendam, in 

 Bredasdorp, Mossel Bay, and George, the strike of the 

 Malmesbury beds is on the whole nearly east and west, 

 roughly parallel to the great southern mountain ranges. 

 This change of strike in the Malmesbury beds may per- 

 haps to a very small extent be due to the forces which 

 produced the folds in the overlying rocks ; but as the 

 dip of the lower beds is generally far higher than the 

 dips observed in the unconformably overlying rocks, 

 it is impossible to thus account fully for the change in 

 the direction of strike of the Malmesbury beds as they 

 are followed eastwards. It is certain that these rocks 

 were folded almost as much as we now see them before 

 the deposition of the Cape formation, and the general 

 parallelism between the two systems of folds, older and 



