129 



West of the township, on the bush road to the Echunga 

 diggings, there occurs a rock of facies quite different from 

 any other I have seen in this part of South Australia. It 

 is a coarse quartzose grit, strongly cemented with silica. At 

 first sie^ht it recalls some varieties of the desert sandstone 

 met with in the far northern parts of the State. It forms 

 a thin capping unconformable on the upturned edges of the 

 schistose rocks, and by differential weathering gives rise to 

 a steep, though not high, escarpment. The change from 

 schist to grit is very strongly marked by the vegetation, 

 which upon the latter is characterized by abundance of 

 grass-tree. It is possible that this grit may be an outlier of 

 upland miocene. 



From Echunga to Macclesfield the road cuts obliquely 

 across the strike of the beds, and shows a section somewhat 

 similar to that between Mount Barker and Echunga. For 

 the first three miles the rocks are soft, sandy schists, which 

 give very little surface outcrop. At this point a belt of 

 soft, shaly, mottled soapstone occurs, similar to rocks at 

 Nairne, Blakiston, and west of Mount Barker town, and, 

 like the former two at any rate, used as a building stone. 

 Just west of Macclesfield is a strong belt of quartzite, very 

 like the rocks just west of Mount Barker town and others be- 

 tween Blakiston and Mount Barker. East of Macclesfield is a 

 broad belt of grey sandy mica schist, followed by alternate 

 tough and friable schists. Some of these contain knots of 

 andalusite, though the latter is nowhere so strongly deve- 

 loped as in the typical paringite. Mica schists of the 

 same general character continue all the way to Strathalbyn. 

 Most of the dips measured along this section are in direc- 

 tions between east and south-east, and at angles which in 

 contrast with those generally obtained in the district are 

 low, averaging between 45 deg. and 50 deg. Along the 

 railway line, Gemmel's to Bugle Ranges, there is a great ex- 

 posure of paringite, alternating with schists, which have 

 not the large phenocrysts of andalusite, this being the most 

 southerly locality at which I have observed thoroughly typi- 

 cal paringite. 



The sections described so far have all been of consider- 

 able extent, and only the broad features of them have been 

 given. An extremely interesting and very important sec- 

 tion between Blakiston and Mount Barker has been ex- 

 amined in considerably more detail, though even here much 

 remains to be done. Many of the points of resemblance 

 to other sections did not strike me until I began to work up 

 my results recently. 



Fig. 2 represents this section. 



