36 Kansas academy of Science. 



omif9sion of the Triassic and Jura^isic groups, so that northern Kansas was probably 

 dry land during the time elsewhere used for the deposit of those series of formatijna. 

 Probably in that time the great valleys of eastern Kansas began to be eroded." 



"In southern Kansas there is seen no such contact between the Cretaceous and 

 the Permian. In going west from Winfield and Wellington, after the last of the 

 Permian rocks have been seen, crossing the sandy depression that constitutes the 

 valley of the Chikaskia we see rocks of a new kind. Not Cretaceous, not Permian 

 — but red Arenaceous limestones, red, hard shales, red clays, with thin layers of a 

 lio-hter color — greenish, grayish, or white. These spread out into the cananed for- 

 mations of the Gypsum Hills, where these red rocks have a cap of white gypsum for 

 many miles. These, like the Permo-Carboniferous rocks, have a slight westerly dip, 

 and in Barber and Comanche counties an exposed thickness of about .500 feet. Their 

 depth below the surface and upward increment westward make them have not less 

 than ten or eleven hundred feet of total thickness, lessened in many places by great 

 erosion. 



"These — red-beds — are well developed in Kingman county, but disappear to the 

 north under the deposits of the Arkansas valley — fifty to GO feet at north Hutchin- 

 son, 140 feet at Sterling — and the high prairie beyond, to reappear, so far as observed, 

 in only two or three limited localities in the north of McPherson county, near the 

 southern bow of the Smoky river. Besides the borings at Hutchinson and Sterling, 

 those at Nickerson and Lyons show the red-beds to be below the surface. At Lyons 

 and Ellsworth, the Dacotah formations are above them; and in Harper, Barber and 

 Kingman counties, limited areas show the same thing in depressions. But in these 

 places, it is only the upper part of the Dacotah. The salt wells at Ellsworth show 

 the red-beds thinner than at Hutchinson, and those at the latter place are thinner 

 than at Kingman, and at Kingman thinner than at Anthony. The red-beds thin out 

 northerly. The Dacotah thins out southerly. These red-beds we call Triassic, but 

 possibly the upper part may be Jurassic. As yet they have yielded no determined 

 fossils in Kansas."' 



"At the bottom of the red-beds, and as we think, continuous upward into them 

 and continuous downward into the Permian, are three or four hundred feet of salifer- 

 ous shales, and intercalated with them the beds of rock salt which have recently be- 

 come so noted. The salt-beds vary from five to one-hundred feet in thickness, and 

 the shales themselves are strongly impregnated. The water poured down the Hutch- 

 inson wells and pumped, immediately comes up a saturated solution: a salt brine 

 so pure that it needs no manipulation, but goes straight from the tank to the evap- 

 orating-pan.'" 



With regard to the increase of our knowledge of the Tertiary formations, the 

 lecturer said: 



"Eleven years ago, Prof. Kedzie wrote: 'The separation between the Cretaceous 

 and Tertiary formations, though clearly defined, is hardly a sharply-traced line, but 

 rather a stretch of country thirty miles wide, extending across the country from Ne- 

 braska to Colorado. Within this band may be found the formations of both periods: 

 the Cretaceous in the low valleys, and the Tertiary upon the high hills." While this 

 passage represented accurately the knowledge of these formations in Kansas at that 

 time, yet, taken with its accompanying map, it shows to us now the deficiencies of 

 that knowledge. The 'band," which is to some extent properly described, is much 

 more than one hundred miles wide Instead of thirty, and instead of running off to 

 Colorado north of the Smoky river, it crosses the Indian Territory, the Cretaceous out- 

 crop to Colorado being confined to the two great valleys, and possibly that of the 

 Cimarron. The presence of the Tertiaries in the valleys, telling their tale of erosion, 

 was entirely overlooked. 



