1896.] ■^-L«^ [Smith. 



west of Searcy, at a 'bald point,' in the vicinity of the widow Gilbert's 

 farm, sixty feet of shaly strata are exposed, dark or nearly black, in its 

 lower i"»art, and reddish yellow and ferruginous towards the top. The 

 shale includes numerous segregations of carbonate of iron and carbon- 

 ate of lime ; the latter containing several fossil marine shells, amongst 

 which the Nautilus ferratus was discovered, a species which occurs in 

 the ferruginous shales of Nolin, in Edmonson county, Ky." The local- 

 ity mentioned is now known to be in the Lower Coal Measures, and is 

 situated not three but thirteen miles northwest of Searcy. 



F. B. Meek, in the Fined Report of the U. 8. Geological Survey of 

 Nebraska,* mentions Hydreinocrinus (Zeacrinus) mucrospinosus McChes- 

 ney, from the Coal Measures of Arkansas, but he does not cite any 

 authority for the statement, nor does he say he has seen this fossil from 

 Arkansas, or give any locality. In all the other literature where this 

 species is mentioned, nothing is said about Arkansas. It is, therefore, 

 concluded that this species was never found in the State. It was, how- 

 ever, found by the Geological Survey, in strata of the Upper Coal Meas- 

 ures, on Poteau mountain, Indian Territory, two miles west of the line 

 of Scott county, Arkansas. 



Featherstonhaughf mentioned a "new species of pentremite in the 

 old red sandstone of Maunielle." The strata of Maumelle mountain, 

 Pulaski county, are of Lower Coal Measure age, and it is not likely 

 that a pentremite was ever found there, since the systematic searches of 

 the Survey failed to tiud any fossils in this region. 



Localities Discovered by the Survey. 



Marine Coal Measure fossils were found by the Survey at twenty-one 

 different places, besides that mentioned by Owen. These extend from 

 Independence county westward to Indian Territory, giving a total of 

 forty-eight genera and ninety species, forty-eight in the Lower Coal 

 Measures, and fifty-two in the Upper, with ten species common to both. 

 It is not thought that this small number of species represents the entire 

 fauna, or that only ten species are common to the two divisions, for the 

 collections were much too scattered and meagre to exhaust the possi- 

 bilities. But the fauna is a poor one, such as one would expect to wan- 

 der in from deeper waters whenever a slight subsidence made the shal- 

 low waters a little more habitable. The faunas could not become well 

 established, because the conditions soon reverted to their okl state, and 

 the inhabitants of the seas were forced to migrate or be exterminated. 



There is, therefore, in this region no gradual transition from the fauna 

 of the Lower Carboniferous limestone, and the fossils of the Lower 

 Coal Measures are just as different from those of the Lower Carbonifer- 

 ous as are those of the Upper Coal Measures. 



It is not attempted to carry the division further than into Upper and 



*0p. cit., p. 149. 



t Geolog. Rep. Elevated Country between the Missouri and Red Rivers, p. 61. 



