Editorial Notes. 



The department of Palaeontology has for sale or exchange a magnificent slab, of 

 about twenty square feet in area, of Uintacrinus Socialis from the Kansas Cre- 

 taceous. It has numerous complete heads in excellent preservation. Address 

 Prof. S. W. Williston, Lawrence, Kansas. 



Mr. Vernon L. Kellogg, formerly managing editor of the Quarterly and an 

 instructor in the University of Kansas, has recently been made Professor of 

 Entomology in Stanford University where he has been associate professor for two 

 years past. Professor Kellogg's Monograph on New Mallophaga, published by 

 the Stanford University, has attracted wide and favorable attention. 



In a decent paper *by Professor Cragin "On the Stratigraphy of the Platte 

 Series, or Upper Cretaceous of the Plains " the author proposes a number of new 

 terms for various divisions of the Cretaceous of Kansas, with many of which the 



*Colorado College Studies, vi, 53. 

 writer can not agree. In the first place, I doubt the necessity or even desirability 

 of introducing a term that is perfectly synonymous with "Upper Cretaceous," 

 already well established, to include the Dakota, Benton, Colorado, Montana and 

 Laramie groups. These rocks, presenting as they do marine, brackish water and 

 fresh water deposits, certainly have nothing in common that renders any other 

 term than that in use desirable. 



Osborne Limestone. The writer has already restricted the name Ft. Haysf 

 Beds to this group of limestones. It is true that Mudge:]: used this term in a wider 



tTrans. Ivans. Acad. Science, xiii, 108. 

 tBull. U. S. Geo. Surv. Hayden. No. :i 21S. 



sense. " The massive stratum of limestone above described, together with all the 

 deposits above the sandstone of the Dakota, I shall call the Fort Hays division." 

 To use Professor Cragin's own words, "if a geological subdivision must be given 

 a confessedly new name whenever one chooses to pare it off or add to it a little, or 

 has doubt about the original disposal of some small fraction of it, confusion worse 

 confounded will increasingly result and finally reign supreme in the science of 

 stratigraphic geology." The benefits that Mudge conferred upon Kansas geology 

 are certainly worthy of this concession. In any event the writer has thus restricted 

 the name and Professor Cragin's name is a pure synonym. 



Smoky Hill Chalk. Professor Marsh has already named these beds the 

 Pteranodon Beds, of which fact Professor Cragin seems to be ignorant. Professor 

 Cragin subdivides these beds into two zones, the "Norton Zone" and the "Trego 

 Zone." Aside from the fact that Norton Zone is an unfortunate term, inasmuch 

 as the deposits in Norton county are very sparse and uncharacteristic, the author 

 gives no characters by which the two zones can be distinguished. The present 

 writer had fondly hoped that he exploded the error made by Mudge and followed 

 by others that the "blue shale" was characteristic of the lower horizons. There 

 is no marl anywhere in the Niobrara deposits and absolutely no lithological differ- 

 ences between the upper and lower beds, as the writer has convinced himself by 

 microscopic examinations. 



(251) KAN. UNIV. CiUAR, VOI,. IV, NO. 1. APRIL, 18%. 



