abstracts: paleontology 565 



horizon, in the Upper Devonian or possibly in part lower Carbonif- 

 erous, which extends from New York to Alabama and westward to 

 Mississippi River. Other extensive deposits of black shale occur at 

 one or more horizons in the lower part of the Devonian and at one 

 horizon in the Ordovician. In addition, black shales overlie some of 

 the coal beds, especially certain beds in the eastern interior coal field. 



Distillation tests were made on 42 samples of black shale from 7 

 eastern states. According to these tests the Devonian black shale can 

 be expected to yield not over 10 or 12 gallons of oil, 2,000 cubic feet 

 of gas (as a by-product), and ^ of a pound of ammonia to the ton. 

 Shales that are highly folded yield less oil or none at all. 



To give some idea of the amount of oil in this shale, a few figures 

 are given for the body of black shale in southwestern Indiana. It is 

 a very moderate assumption that the yield of this area in southwestern 

 Indiana would be 280,000,000 gallons or nearly 7,000,000 barrels of 

 oil to the square mile, or say 100,000,000,000 barrels for the total 

 area underlain by the shale in southwest Indiana. 



At present, interest in the mining of the eastern black shales as a 

 source of oil must confine itself to localities where one of three condi- 

 tions is met. The shale can be utilized, first, where it outcrops in a 

 position to permit mining on a large scale by steam shovel at a mini- 

 mum cost; second, where coal that is overlain by bituminous shale is 

 being stripped; and third, where a coal bed that is being mined has a 

 black shale roof that comes down and must be removed from the mine 

 in large amounts. Of these the second condition seems to offer the 

 best opportunity for a trial plant, as the overlying black shale must 

 be removed in mining the coal. R. W. S. 



PALEONTOLOGY. — Fauna of the Mount Whyte formation. Charles 



D. Walcott. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 67, No. 3 



(Cambrian Geology and Paleontology, Part IV): 61-115. 1917. 



This paper discusses the localities of the Mount Whyte formation, 



a name proposed by the writer in 1908 for a series of alternating bands 



of limestone and siliceous and calcareous shale found in Alberta and 



British Columbia, Canada, on Mount Whyte, Mount Bosworth, 



Mount Stephen, and Castle Mountain, to which localities are now 



added Mount Odaray, Ptarmigan Peak, Mount Shaffer, Yoho Canyon, 



and Wonder Pass, explored in 1917 and preceding seasons. The 



Albertella fauna, which was previously included, is now found to occur 



at an horizon 500 feet above the Mount Whyte formation. The 



