THE NOMENCLATURE OF KANSAS COAL-MEASURES 



EMPLOYED BY THE KANSAS STATE 



GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



By Erasmus Haworth and John Bennett, University of Kansas, Lawrence. 



XT EARS ago the Kansas State Geological Survey began a 

 ^ systematic study of the detail stratigraphy of eastern 

 Kansas. Largely because the existence of the Survey de- 

 pended upon biennial appropriations, preliminary reports were 

 made. Naturally such reports were somewhat defective. 

 Geologists in the neighboring states, Missouri, Iowa, and 

 Nebraska, have taken up the matter in a way largely by criti- 

 cism of Kansas, rather than by giving details of conditions in 

 their own states, with the result that there is now in print, 

 widely scattered through magazines, state and governmental 

 reports, a comparatively extensive literature of the stratig- 

 raphy of the Kansas Coal-measures, practically all of which 

 is partly correct and partly incorrect. This condition has 

 been aggravated, wholly unintentionally, through the labors of 

 the United States Geological Survey. This organization has 

 surveyed the lola quadrangle and Independence quadrangle. 

 An error in stratigraphy was made and published regarding 

 the southwest corner of the lola quadrangle. Field-work on 

 the Independence quadrangle was conducted and a preliminary 

 report published before this error in the lola quadrangle was 

 detected, and as a result its influence caused errors to creep 

 into the Independence sheet reports as well. 



In the present paper, the stratigraphy of this part of the 

 state is given in great detail, after years of continued work, 

 and it is confidently believed we have finally succeeded in get- 

 ting all matters straightened out, so that the presentation here 

 oflfered is a complete and accurate exposition of positions and 

 relations of all alternating beds of limestones and shales, with 

 included sandstones from the bottom of the Lower Coal-meas- 

 ures up to the Burlingame limestone. Every individual lime- 

 stone has been traced with greatest detail by a personal exam- 

 ination not only of every mile square, but by a geologist 

 following it across every forty-acre tract of land from the 

 north side of the state to the south. In some instances, where 



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