70 Kansas . Academy of Science. 



IN THE NIOBRARA AND LARAMIE CRETACEOUS. 



By Charles H. Sternberg, Lawrence. 



npHE early part of the season was spent in the Kansas chalk. As 

 -*- has been the case during many of the last thirty-five years, 

 since I first began collecting in this formation, I have been quite 

 successful. My three sons, George, Charles and Levi, were with 

 me, while the monotony of camp life was broken by the presence 

 of my son Greorge's wife and baby son. We made our first camp 

 at Mrs. Livingston's ranch, on Hackberry creek, south of Quinter, 

 Kan., in Gove county, near the eastern line. And we are under 

 many obligations to Mrs. Livingston and her two sons for shelter 

 for our team, as well as hay; otherwise our horses might have suf- 

 fered from the inclemency of the weather. 



While here I experienced for the first time a very peculiar elec- 

 tric storm. About the 10th of May a violent wind and dust storm 

 came up from the northeast about sundown, and gravel, sand and 

 earth were hurled through the air with great force. I faced it for 

 a hundred yards to get my son Levi, who was at the barn. My face 

 was beaten with sand and gravel, and I could hardly walk, owing 

 to the fury of the gale. However, I got to the barn, and, taking 

 my son's hand, we started to return. It was so dark that we could 

 not see an inch ahead. What was my surprise to see the telephone 

 line that was suspended over my tent dotted with points from which 

 light radiated in all directions, and as far as I could see the line it 

 was swinging, with myriad little lamps, back and forth with the wind. 

 Looking around, I saw posts that supported a barbed- wire fence 

 sending out light in the same way, except, of course, they were 

 stationary. I found after the storm that these centers of light 

 were nails driven in the posts. So for the first time in the history 

 of western Kansas, as far as I have observed, we had a display of 

 St. Elmo's fire. 



At our camp on Hackberry we discovered, among other fine ma- 

 terial, the largest example of a species of Inoceramus I have ever 

 seen preserved. It measured four feet in height and five feet in 

 length. At certain horizons in the Niobrara of Kansas acres of 

 chalk are strewn with fragments of these shells in endless profusion, 

 owing to the fact that the chalk is disintegrated and washed away 

 by water or blown to the four points of the compass by Kansas 



