272 KANSAS UNIVERSITY QUARTERLY. 



connected description of the location and extent of each of them. 

 Plate XX is a generalized section of the Coal Measures from the 

 Mississippian up to and including the Cottonwood Falls limestone. 

 This is known to be near the base of the Permian, but this Survey has 

 not attempted to locate the division line exactly. The Cottonwood 

 Falls limestone is simply taken because it is a prominent system and 

 therefore a good division line between the two seasons' work. The 

 total thickness here given is 2750 feet, 800 feet of which is Lower 

 Coal Measures and 1950 feet Upper Coal Measures. In making this 

 estimate the maximum thickness of the different formations was never 

 used, neither was the minimum. It is doubtful if at any one place a 

 drill would prove the distance to the Mississippian to quite equal the 

 figures given, but there certainly could not be much of a decrease in 

 the thickest portions. 



vVt the base of the Coal Measures lie the Cherokee shales, with a 

 thickness averaging about 450 feet. In the vicinity of Paola they 

 seem to be over 700 feet thick, but in other places they are not more 

 than 400, while at Fredonia they are only about 350. This shale 

 bed with its included sandstone is the most remarkable formation in 

 some respects in the whole Coal Measures. It has great lateral 

 extent. Its northwestern extension is unknown. At Cherryvale it is 

 nearly 425 feet thick: at Neodesha it is fully 425 feet; at Thayer it is 

 known to be 400 feet, but how much more cannot be said. At 

 Chanute it is 410 feet, and at Humboldt the deep well passed 325 

 feet into it, but did not pass through it. To the north it reaches in 

 undiminished thickness to Leavenworth with the following thicknesses 

 at various intervening places, as shown by deep wells at the places 

 named: (iirard, 446: Fort Scott, 410; Pleasanton, 440; Paola, 750; 

 Kansas City, 420; and Leavenworth, 540. There are many reasons 

 for believing that the same shale beds reach entirely across the state 

 of Missouri and into Iowa. Broadhead* mentions a few deep bor- 

 ings, one in Ray county, which shows them to be about 400 feet, and 

 in his general section of the Missouri Coal Measures he gives from 

 350 to 450 feet of shales and sandstone at the base. Records df a 

 number of other wells in northern Missouri show the same condition. 

 From the accounts of the Iowa Coal Measures given in the different 

 geological reports of that state, and from the writer's personal knowl- 

 edge of portions of the state, it is reasonably certain that nearly the 

 whole of the Iowa Coal Measures have a heavy shale bed at their 

 base which connects directly with the similar one in Missouri, and that 

 in turn with the Cherokee shales in Kansas. Southward into the 

 Indian Territory the same shale bed extends for many miles, and 



* Mo. Cf.il. Survey Kep., 187i.'. i>. K-t. 



