60 Rev. 8. 8. Donian — Geology of Basidoland. 



in circumference at the upper extremity of the shaft. iS'ear the 

 Caledon River outside of Ficksburg a large quantity of bones was 

 recently found belonging to individuals of various sizes, and presumably 

 of different species. The bones are broken and mixed up togetlier as 

 if they had been swept down into their present position by a flood. 

 They are embedded in chocolate-coloured mudstone. So plentiful are 

 they that a farmer has built the walls of his cattle kraal of blocks of 

 stone containing fragments of bones.^ In this band of mudstone are 

 curious circular bombs of claj', filled with fine glassj" sand, with 

 a central nucleus of limestone, so that they look like liowitzer shells. 

 The diameter of these concretions is usually about 10 or 12 inches, and 

 the thickness of the clay layers about 8 inches. The local name for 

 them is " Basuto pots," and the term is certainly not inapplicable, as 

 on breaking in the top the whole of the contents can be emptied out. 

 jS'odules are of frequent occurrence all through the Red Beds, and are 

 more or less common through the whole of tlie ^lolteno Red Beds and 

 Cave Sandstone. Silicified wood is fairly plentiful in the Red Beds, 

 but the remains are mostly fragmentary ; the largest portion of a tree 

 I have seen measures 4 feet in length and 1 ft. 10 in. in diameter. It 

 occurs between Cana and Hlotse. The Red Beds in many places must 

 have been dej^osited in shoal water, as ripple-marked sandstone is very 

 common, so much so in fact that the Rev. D. F. Ellenberger, of 

 Masitisi, has built one of his outhouses and flagged all his floors with 

 slabs of the most beautifully ripple-marked sandstone belonging to the 

 upper members of the Red Beds. Fossil fishes have been found in the 

 bed of the Telle River said to belong to the genus Semionoius, but 

 I am not able to vouch for the accuracy of this. I understand these 

 fish eventually found their way to the British ^tuseum. Spines of 

 a small carnivorous Dinosaur, Massospondylm, have also been found in 

 the neighbourhood of ^lasitisi. The Red Beds are remarkably imiform 

 in thickness and appearance all over the country. They have been 

 traced for nearly 100 miles in practically a straight line without any 

 marked difference, the average thickness being about 300 feet. In 

 some places in South Basutoland they are 400 feet thick. They lie 

 nearly horizontally on the Molteno Beds, partaking of their general 

 easterly dip. 



(2) The Cave Sandstone is extremely difficult to separate from the 

 underlying Red Beds, which pass up into it without any marked 

 difference. Thus there is no definite line of demai-cation ; Red Beds 

 occur in what I consider Lower Cave Sandstone, but the Cave 

 Sandstone is distinguished, especially in its upper members, by its 

 greater massiveness, and also by its prevailing grey colour. It forms 

 precipices round the tops of the hills, in many cases overhanging. 

 The individual beds are very thick, and the rock does not readily split 

 into lamina3. The Cave Sandstone Aveathcrs into huge pillars, or 

 breaks off in immense blocks hundreds of tons in weight. These 



^ The Rev. 11. Dieterleu, of Levibe, has a vei'tehra of a Dinosaur, 6 inches in 

 length, which is said to have come from Red Beds, and also near his station there is 

 a portion of an arm-bone, embedded in grey mudstone, just at the base of the 

 Red Beds. 



