THE KARROO SYSTEM 197 



kisiki from St. John's and near the Erabotyi mouth, 

 they are better laminated than higher up in the group ; 

 the surfaces of the laminae are frequently spotted with 

 circular rusty markings about the size of a shilling, 

 perhaps due to the decomposition of iron pyrites dis- 

 tributed more or less uniformly through them. Above 

 these shales come" the clays and mudstones, occasionally 

 sandy, dark blue in colour. On the south of the St. 

 John's fault, along which the Dwyka and Ecca beds 

 are let down against the Table Mountain sandstone, 

 the Umsikaba beds are harder and more like the Ecca 

 of the west than in other parts of Pondoland. At Cape 

 Hermes some thin shales contain obscure plant re- 

 mains reminding one of the Schizoneura stems of the 

 west. The Umsikaba beds are found from Libode to 

 Bizana, but have not been followed south-west of 

 Libode. 



In the Worcester District the Ecca beds are faulted 

 down against the Pre-Cape rocks between a point some 

 four miles west of the town of Worcester and the Goree 

 Kiver, and again near Eobertson. The beds are green 

 and brown argillaceous sandstones and shales and mud- 

 stones, sometimes coloured green and red. From the 

 sandstones and mudstones exposed in a small quarry 

 near Worcester station specimens of Gangamopteris, 

 Glossopteris, and Cardiocarpus have been found ; the last- 

 named genus is not known elsewhere in the Colony, 

 although it occurs at Vereeniging ; Schizoneura occurs 

 in a quarry west of Worcester. 



The list of fossils from the Ecca beds in the Colony 

 is short, and with the exception of a portion of a rep- 



