Geological Papers. 255 



miles east of Newkirk, Okla., where both this and the underlying 

 Winfield limestone become arenaceous in their eastern edges. All 

 these limestones, from the Wreford up, grade into the Red Beds^ 

 in about the latitude of Perry, Okla. 



Section of the Herington limestone and the top of the Enter- 

 prise shale at the McCarty place, two miles northwest of Marion, 

 Kan.: 



Feet. Inches. 



6. Limestones, thicker and thinner, buff, fossiliferous, and not 

 very hard. Lower ones soft and massive, others some- 

 what porous and geodiferous. Near the top is a two-foot 

 layer with myriads of small pelecypods ; over this is another 



layer with larger shells 9 



5. Shales, drab, weathering yellowish 11 3 



4. Soft limestone, weathering shaly 1 



3. Marly shales six inches to 8 



2. Thin bedded, soft limestone 2 



1. Olive clayey, perhaps calcareous shales 6 



No. 6 of this section is the Herington limestone. The exposures 

 in the creeks two miles north and three miles west of Marion are 

 probably above this outcrop, as no bottom to them could be seen, 

 and the texture, as mentioned above was different. The total 

 thickness near Marion may reach twelve or fifteen feet. 



Pearl shales. — These shales are probably included in No. 10 of 

 Meek and Hayden's section given above, as, perhaps, is the Hering- 

 ton limestone too. On account of the weakness of the overlying 

 formation and its consequent recession from the outcrop of the 

 limestone below^the exposures of this formation are few and small 

 and do not show the nature of its entire thickness at any one place. 

 It is known to be a succession of red, blue and green ones, though 

 the dimensions of the individual layers are unknown. The esti- 

 mated thickness of the Pearl shales in the vicinity of Herington 

 and Marion is seventy feet. 



The upper part of this shale is of the character of the "cracked" 

 shales described by Meek and Hayden in their section already re- 

 ferred to. This structure continues up to the "conglomerate" at 

 the top of the formation in such a way as to make it difficult to 

 distinguish them in the region northwest of Marion, where there 

 are no good exposures. Below this material are blue, red and drab 

 shales in variable thickness to the limestone below. The term 

 "Pearl shales" is used because that station on the Rock Island 

 railroad is in the vicinity of their outcrop. 



Abilene conglomer'ate. — The stratum to which this term is ap- 

 plied has not been correlated with certainty with the Abilene 

 conglomerate, and the appellation is provisional until positive cor- 



