294 



KAMSAS UNIVERSITY QUARTERLY, 



has adopted in a general way the principles first enunciated by Win- 

 slow | which have already been referred to in this number of the 

 Quarterly. It assumes that throughout Coal Measiue time there 

 was a gradual but irregular subsidence of both the ocean bottom and 

 land areas under the Coal Measure areas, and that the subsidence 

 occurred principally near the shore lines, so that as fast as the sedi- 

 mentation from the land area would bring the new formed strata 



Fig. 3. 

 Representing the ordinary idea of the division of the Coal Measures. (After Keyes. > 



near the surface additional subsidence would occur, and in this way 

 a continuous series of marginal formations would be produced, the 

 older of which would be farther oceanward than the younger. He 

 has gone farther than Winslow and has suggested that the natural 

 division of the Coal Measures would be a line running diagonally to 

 the stratification, placing all of the marginal areas in one group and 

 the deep sea areas in another, as represented by figures 9 and 10 on 

 page 162 of his Report, which are here reproduced as figures 3 and 4. 

 The conditions in Kansas will not admit of such a classification for 

 the following reasons: First: — According to the Keyes explanation 

 the later, and consequently younger, marginal areas would be land- 



Fig. 4. 

 Representing Keyes' idea of the division of the Coal Measures. (After Keyes.) 



ward from the earlier and older. But we have undoubted evidence 

 that the land area for Kansas in Coal Measure time was the Missis- 

 sippian to the southeast, while the later marginal areas are now found 

 much farther to the west, as is illustrated by the Osage City shale 

 beds and coal which are from 100 to 120 miles to the west of the 

 present western exposure of the Mississippian formation. Second: — 

 The universal westward thickening and eastward thinning of all the 



tMo. Geol. Rep. Coal, 1891, and Bui. G. S. A.. Vol. ill. p. 



