38 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



most common of which are Liquidambar, Populus, Salix, Fagus, 

 Ouercus, Platanus, Sassafras, Liriodendron, Magnolia, and, more 

 rarely, the Cinnamomum. These are represented by about fifty 

 species, all extinct. In addition we find some of extinct races, as 

 the Creducria and Dombeiopsis. 



These fossils are found at uncertain intervals of territory. In 

 searching for them we have frequently examined every visible out- 

 crop for fifteen or twenty miles without finding a specimen, then 

 perhaps a single square mile would furnish several good localities. 



Our cabinet is represented by specimens collected from twenty- 

 five or thirty places, from Washington county to Fort Larned, near 

 the Arkansas, a distance of one hundred and seventy-five miles. The 

 fossil plants are usually obtained from thin layers or strata, extend- 

 ing in a horizontal position along a ravine or around a hill. They 

 may occur at several places in the same vicinity, but usually without 

 any connection. Thus in Clay county, near Riverdale, they were 

 found at the bottom of a well, as low as the bed of the Republican, 

 and on the top of an adjoining hill two hundred feet high, with 

 numerous strata between, in which none could be seen. 



These deposits appear to have been local, dependent upon cir- 

 cumstances. There must have been, necessarily, an arm of the sea 

 or lake, with soft, sandy mud, bordered by an adjoining dry land 

 covered with a forest. The characteristic of the local deposits indi- 

 cate that the forests were on small islands sparsely scattered over 

 the Cretaceous ocean. 



While plants are thus widely scattered in this sandstone, other 

 fossils are extremely rare. In the vicinity of Fort Harker a few 

 fish vertebrae and sharks' teeth are found. Though we have carefully 

 searched over a large portion of the country covered by this deposit, 

 both in the Cretaceous and the beds called Triassic, for moUusks and 

 the common marine fossils, we have discovered them in but one 

 locality, and that of very limited area.* 



Three years ago, passing from Salina to Harker, when near 

 what is now the town of Bavaria, we picked up in the road some 

 marine fossils. Tracing the specimens to the top of an adjoining 

 hill, we found a few acres covered with a stratum not over two feet 

 in thickness, rich in small shells. We sent a box to Prof. Meek, of 

 the Smithsonian Institution, for critical examination, who found 

 twelve species new to science, a full description of which can be 

 seen in Hayden's recent report of the United States Geological 

 Survey of Wyoming and contiguous Territories, pages 297-313. 



* Since the reading of this article before the Society, another locality has been found about four 

 miles from Bavaria. They are in good preservation, differing very nnich from the first locality, Inif 

 have not yet been critically examined. 



