294 THE WOOD BEDS 



lie against slates belonging to the Bokkeveld series, with- 

 out the intervention of any conglomerate. 



THE WOOD BEDS. 



The Wood beds are found overlying the Enon in the 

 northern part of the area, and are especially well seen 

 between Blue Cliff Station and the Witte River below 

 Enon. The valley of the Bezuidenhout's Eiver below 

 Blue Cliff lies entirely in the Wood beds, and both 

 above and below its confluence with the Sunday's Eiver 

 the rocks are well exposed in the bed of the latter river. 

 The total thickness of the Wood beds in this locality 

 may be as much as 1,000 feet. They consist of various 

 sediments, sands, clays, hard limestones and sandstones, 

 and well-laminated shales. 



The base of the Wood beds in this valley is taken to 

 be a loose yellow sandstone, seen in a cliff section above 

 Blue Cliff Station. Farther down the valley many large 

 pieces of tree-trunks, one of which is twenty-five feet 

 in length, are preserved in a clayey sandstone. These 

 are probably the trunks of conifers, but no leaves or 

 other parts of the trees have been found with them. 

 Some of the wood evidently lay for some time in the water, 

 for the shells of a small boring mollusc, Gastrochana 

 dominicalis, are found in it in considerable numbers. 

 The only other animal remains discovered in these sand- 

 stones are oyster shells, and some fragile fragments of 

 large bones, too imperfect to be named. In some hard 

 limestone bands intercalated with the upper part of the 

 sandstones there are numbers of shells of Unio uiten- 



