216 THE RED BEDS 



The Red Beds. 



The Molteno beds pass upwards conformably into a 

 group of strata that are distinguished from them by 

 their prevailing red colour. The name was first used by 

 Mr. Dunn who described the group in the Stormberg 

 area, where they cover a considerable tract of country. 

 The Eed beds have been found to extend into Basuto- 

 land and Griqualand East, being confined as a rule to 

 the slopes of the mountain ranges. 



The most characteristic rocks of the Ked beds are 

 purple and red mudstones and shales, but red sandstones 

 and thick beds of yellow and white fine-grained felspathic 

 sandstones are very common. The red colour has in 

 many places been removed from the rocks by the bleach- 

 ing due to weathering, and as blue and green mudstones 

 are frequently present it is often not easy to draw a 

 line between these and the Molteno beds. The thick 

 glittering sandstones of the latter do not occur in this 

 group. Conglomerates, though rare, are not entirely 

 absent, but they only occur at the base of the division, 

 and the pebbles which are small are of white quartz and 

 quartzite. 



Calcareous rocks are frequently found, seldom in 

 definite layers but more commonly in the form of ir- 

 regular nodules of a bluish or pinkish colour in some of 

 the mudstones. Silicified wood is not uncommon in the 

 Eed beds. Lithologically the Eed beds show many 

 points of resemblance to the Burghersdorp beds, and like 

 them contain the remains of reptiles, chiefly carnivorous 

 dinosaurs. 



