56 Kansas Academy of Science. 



surface while this horizon was the surface, as in that event 

 it would not have had the pressure commonly considered nec- 

 essary to the crystallization of granite. The writer is not yet 

 satisfied that it is granite ; but whatever it may be, it is some- 

 thing apparently unknown in Kansas before, and it appears 

 that at Elmdale, Kan., it has since been encountered at about 

 the same geological horizon, it there being reached at about 

 1700 feet from the surface, but the erosion in the Kaw valley 

 and the variation in the thickness of the strata would account 

 for the difference. Another interesting feature of this anti- 

 cline is that many of the strata, both of shale and limestone, 

 are heavily mineralized, and while the ledges are continuous, 

 yet in many places the texture so changes that they would 

 hardly be recognizable under the general characteristics of 

 the ledge. 



One other interesting feature of this is the partial noncon- 

 formity of the strata of the carboniferous formations, it being 

 found that on the north side of the river the heavy ledge of 

 the Emporia limestone lies about fifty feet above the lower 

 blue Emporia, and the Burlingame limestone about thirty feet 

 below the Emporia blue, while toward the west of the dome, 

 and on the south side of the river and near the line between 

 sections 27 and 28, these shales thin out and the Burlingame 

 is bulging upward, while the heavy Emporia dips downward, 

 approaching each other to within about twenty feet. This 

 evidently shows a surface shifting during the formative 

 periods of the rocks. 



These conditions and the minerals found in the rocks and 

 shales would suggest to me that during all of the formative 

 period of these strata there may have been an under-water 

 vent from the interior of the earth, through which minerals 

 in various forms were thrown out and mixed with the mud and 

 shell deposits, and thus deposited with the regular strata ; 

 and that vastly more interesting discoveries are likely to be 

 found in this region than are now made. 



Ever since white men settled in this region earthquake 

 shocks of more or less violence have been felt at frequent in- 

 tervals, varying from slight tremors to violent shocks that 

 threw down chimneys, cracked stone buildings and threw 

 frame buildings from their foundations, and said to be as 

 heavy as the one that wrecked San Francisco. So it may be 



