Geological Papers. 61 



Carbonate of lime can not stay in solution in water unless 

 there is an excess of carbonic acid present. Green plants use 

 great quantities of this acid in elaborating their foods, such as 

 the sugars, starch and the proteins, and hence water plants 

 produce a scarcity of carbonic acid in the water, and conse- 

 quently the lime carbonate is precipitated and they are buried 

 in it, making much limestone. But where there are many 

 water animals near by they relieve the plants of the carbonate 

 of lime and use it for their skeletons, later to become limestone. 

 In this way are produced shell beds, crinoidal limestone, fine 

 chalk like that of England, France and western Kansas, and 

 coarse chalk like that quarried at Cottonwood Falls, coral 

 rock, and common limestone made of calcareous mud derived 

 from any or all the preceding. 



Some of the quartz of granitic rocks is dissolved in water 

 containing alkali, from which it is removed in several interest- 

 ing ways. Certain rhizopods, sponges and the diatoms use it 

 in making their skeletons. Hot alkaline water will drop silica 

 on cooling, as in the overflow of geysers. A very interesting 

 form of deposition occurs wherever the alkaline water of lakes, 

 ponds and rivers holding silica in solution encounters organic 

 acids derived from the decaying bodies of plants and animals. 

 In this way great quant'ities of wood in Kansas and elsewhere 

 have become petrified (silicified), and cavities have been filled 

 with flint, as in the Mississippian limestone (together with 

 zinc and lead sulfids), and in the Wreford (Flint Hills) lime- 

 stone and in other limestones of the state. 



Before all the strata of the Mississippian period were laid 

 down in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, the earth forces 

 proceeded to squeeze up the Ozarks and the Wichita, Arbuckle 

 and neighboring mountains of Oklahoma to an altitude com- 

 mensurate with the earth's needs and thus made dry land 

 again in eastern Kansas and Oklahoma. How many thousand 

 years eastern Kansas continued dry we do not know, but we 

 do know that certain readjustments which always attend 

 mountain-making resulted in the downfall of the crust be- 

 tween the Ozarks and the Arbuckle and Wichita mountains. 

 Indeed, in eastern Oklahoma, beneath where the Arkansas 

 river now flows, the crust sank more than a mile, involving 

 eastern Kansas in the downthrow. This breakdown did not 

 occur suddenly or continuously, but was accomplished during 



