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sunk near the creek to 15 feet through the bank of soft black shale there 

 overlaid by white plastic clay. I believe that the bottom of the shaft is not 

 far from the Permian limestone, if it does not reach it ; but this could not be 

 ascertained, the bed of the creek being in a deep depression, as low nearly as 

 the bed of Smoky Hill River. The materials taken out of the shaft had been 

 decomposed by atmospheric action ; the small fragments of shale did not show 

 trace of organic remains ; but having dug out from the bed of the black shale 

 in the creek some large pieces, in order to get specimens of the coal, I was 

 surprised to see them, in their contact with the carbonaceous layer, covered 

 by a prodigious quantity of fragments of a plant which has been recently 

 discovered in the Neocomian of Switzerland, and has been seen as yet in 

 this Cretaceous formation only. These remains have been described under 

 the generic name of Gyrophyllites. Professor Heer, in his TJrwelt der 

 Schweitz, page 190, has figured and briefly described four different forms, 

 which he considers as species of vegetable. These remains are in whorls of 

 six to ten linear, slightly oblanceolate divisions, attached to a common center, 

 like the spokes of a wheel, and, where I found them, superposed and heaped 

 in immense numbers one upon another in such a way that the impressions ot 

 the whorls and their divisions were perfectly distinct, but the stems and 

 branches could not be seen. The relation of form of these small plants is 

 with the Annularia of the coal measures, which are also often seen in ac- 

 cumulated whorls without distinct impressions of their steins or branches. 

 In the form observed in Kansas, the divisions are short, measuring scarcely 

 more than one-fourth of an inch, gradually widening from the base to the an- 

 gular point. Their impressions into the shale are deep and angular or with 

 a deep medial line, as if they had been made by three-faced or prismatic ab- 

 ruptly-pointed crystals of selenite. Indeed, most of them were exactly filled 

 like molds by those crystals, and it is the reason why, after a protracted ex- 

 amination, I was left uncertain of the true nature of these remarkable im- 

 pressions. The whole mass was, moreover, so fragile that it was difficult to 

 separate any portion of it in the horizontal plane of their marks, and I could 

 not carry away and preserve any specimens for drawing and descriptions. I 

 have, however, seen at Fort Harker, in a small cabinet of fossils from the 

 vicinity, one piece of red sandstone found at the same locality with dicoty- 

 ledonous leaves, which bears whorls of the impressions of those Gyrophyllites, 

 with apparently traces of branches or stems. Unhappily, I could not obtain 

 the specimen on account of the absence of the owner. 



