112 Kansas Academy of Science. 



growth of ferns and other plants of the lower vegetable orders. But the immense numbers 

 of leaves in the Dacotah sands indicate forests on the land, whose undergrowth through 

 ages must have left a carbonaceous deposit which, entombing and preserving some trunks, 

 may well be the lignite of to-day. And here is another problem. Was there not a 

 lignitic stratum formed in immediate proximity to every thick deposit of leaves? In 

 other words, may the leaf deposits be taken as "indications" — in the miners' sense — of 

 lignitic coal? An extended examination of many localities would have to determine 

 this. 



CELESTITE. 



Just outside Salina, on the east of the town, is a hill of Dacotah sandstone. On the 

 southeast this hill is cut into a bold front by the Smoky Hill river and the excavations 

 for a flouring mill. This front shows the upper layers of the permo-carboniferous rocks 

 and shales. A few miles south, the cavities in these upper layers yield beautiful crys- 

 tals of celestite — the discovery of which is to be credited to our friend Mr. Warren 

 Knaus. In Washington county, northeast from the county seat, a bold bluff overlooking 

 Mill creek is capped by the sandstones of the Dacotah, and is marked at a lower level 

 by a thick ledge of permian limestone which is again underbedded with gypsum. At 

 the west end of the bluff the Dacotah is eroded, and the permian ledge is quarried, and 

 here the writer found last spring the beautiful flat crystals of celestite, such as were 

 found in a similar position in Saline county. Another problem! We know that sea 

 water contains, besides other salts, a supply of strontia. Were those crystals of the 

 upper permian cavities deposited by infiltration from the Dacotah sea, and may we not 

 expect in this horizon somewhere a supply of this mineral which will have a commer- 

 cial value? 



ARTESIAN WELLS. 



We are led to think from many observations that an important if not the chief item 

 in the economic value of the sandstones of the Dacotah will turn out to be their capa- 

 city of holding water and supplying it to a large part of west-central Kansas, beyond 

 their area of surface development. The dip of the strata appears to be mainly west and 

 by north. We pointed out a year ago that there are indications that the rocks of western 

 Kansas have an easterly dip. Putting these facts together, we infer that somewhere be- 

 tween the two regions there must be a synclinal trough, and along the line of that 

 trough water will mostly be found in the sandstone in sufficient quantity, of good quality 

 or more or less impregnated with iron or other minerals. The sinking of test wells in 

 several counties by State authority after a careful surface survey would surely pay. Ow- 

 ing to the fact that the surface west of the Dacotah is more elevated than in its own re- 

 gion of exposure, these wells could not be flowing wells — though the water might be 

 expected to rise in the tube — unless, as sometimes might be the case, cracks and fissures 

 in upper cretaceous strata gave local supply from the west. In the west of Mitchell 

 county there is a true flowing well in an outlier of the Dacotah, though the source of 

 supply is probably partly in the surface deposits — tertiary or alluvium. We refer to 

 the famous Great Spirit Spring near Cawker City, the geology of which, we believe, has 

 not before been described. It is a natural artesian well in the Dacotah. 



CONCLUSION. 



Dr. Peale and others of the National Geological Survey describe the development of 

 the Dacotah, in the mountains of the west, as being in places metamorphosed by igneous 

 action and elsewhere flexed and folded by tremendous forces. None of this appears in 

 Kansas, but the relation of this formation to the Benton above and the Permian below 

 is very like its position as described by Hayden and Lesquereux, in Nebraska. Before 

 writing this paper we consulted such descriptive works as were within our reach, and 

 while regretting that we could not obtain Hayden's Report for 1867, yet we were forci- 



