76 Kansas Academy of Science 



in the direction of Emporia is about sixteen feet to the mile, as- 

 suming that the upper layers of these beds exposed near Columbus- 

 would have an elevation of 1100 feet at Galena were they still ex- 

 posed at that place. 



II. ROCKS OF THE COAL MEASURE OR KANSAN PERIOD OF 

 THE CARBONIC ERA. 



Thickness, 2780 feet. 



1.— Strata of the Loiver Coal Measure or Lotver Kansan Epoch. 



The rock beds found in eastern Kansas. Thickness, 1440 feet. (The layers are described, 

 beginning with the lowest.) 



(1) Cherokee Beds, thickness, 450 feet. This formation con- 

 sists largely of shales, a few thin layers of limestone, several beds 

 of sandstone of various thicknesses, becoming increasingly promi- 

 nent to the southward, and of seven or more beds of coal. The 

 shales are valuable for brick-making, and the sandstones serve as 

 rich reservoirs of petroleum and natural gas under a belt extending 

 from Paola to CofiPeyville and south into Indian Territory. The 

 Weir City coal-bed, situated about 200 feet above the base of the 

 Cherokee beds, yields the coal mined near Pittsburg and probably 

 'that mined at Atchison, Leavenworth, and in eastern Indian Terri- 

 tory. 



Nearly eighty-five per cent, of the coal, ninety-nine per cent, of 

 the natural gas and ninety-nine per cent, of the petroleum mined 

 in Kansas are obtained from the Cherokee beds. It is estimated 

 that, during 1904, 5,000,000 tons of coal, 7,000,000 barrels of petro- 

 leum and an unknown number of billion cubic feet of gas were 

 obtained from these beds ; and that from these and the other beds 

 of the Lower Coal Measures were obtained 150,000,000 brick of 

 various kinds and 2,700,000 sacks of cement — all, coal, oil, gas, brick, 

 and cement, worth more than $16,000,000. 



The Cherokee beds dip heavily to the southward in southeastern 

 Kansas, increasing to a thickness of more than 9000 feet in eastern 

 Indian Territory. Probably these beds in Indian Territory are the 

 source of the petroleum and natural gas of eastern Kansas. If so, 

 middle Kansas does not overlie this sheet of gas and oil, and. there- 

 fore^ cantiot obtain them from the sandstones of the Cherokee beds. 



The Cherokee beds outcrop in Cherokee, Crawford and Bourbon 

 counties, but are penetrated by wells and shafts throughout eastern^ 

 Kansas, as they dip at a small angle to the westward. Fossils are 

 not abundant in these beds. 



(2) Labette Beds, 110 feet. These consist of the Fort Scott 

 (Oswego) limestones, twenty-five feet; Labette shales, sixty feet; 



