Douglass : A Geological Reconnaissance. 275 



horizontal position, and extending northeastward beyond the range of 



vision. These are probably, in part at least, the Eagle Sandstones, 



and the locality would furnish a favorable opportunity to study the 



deposits. 



The Judith River Beds. 



Fish Creek Area, etc. — These have been so carefully studied and 

 so well described by Hatcher and Stanton that I cannot add much to 

 the observations of these gentlemen. In 1905 I observed a good ex- 

 posure near the head of Fish Creek north of Melville and northeast of 

 Porcupine Butte. This is the most western locality in which I have 

 seen these beds in the southern portion of Montana. Like the other 

 formations exposed here, the outcrop extends in an easterly direction, 

 the rocks becoming less and less disturbed at greater distances from 

 the mountains. The Judith River beds are exposed along the Great 

 Northern Railroad, for a distance, if my memory serves me rightly, of 

 over a hundred miles east of Havre. 



The Fish Creek Beds. 



The Fish Creek Area. — In the region of Fish Creek, the gray beds, 

 which are darker and contain more carbonaceous matter toward the 

 top, are overlaid by a series of alternating dark shales and hard 

 laminated sandstones. They are lithologically different from both 

 the light-colored Judith River beds below and the Bearpaw shales 

 above. The shales contain much carbonaceous matter and fragmentary 

 plant impressions, while more perfect fossil leaves were found in the 

 sandstones. Hatcher and Stanton do not fully describe these beds. I 

 am not able to say whether they are marine or non-marine, but judge 

 that they are in a sense transitional between the Judith River beds and 

 the marine Bearpaw shales. They sometimes resemble the upper por- 

 tions of the Bearpaw shales, but they contain more sandstone. They 

 were included in what I originally denominated the " Fish Creek 

 Beds," the lower portion of which have been correlated with the Judith 

 River formation. Instead of giving these beds a new name to dis- 

 tinguish them from the Judith River below and the Bearpaw shales 

 above, I think it better to restrict the name Fish Creek to this forma- 

 tion. This horizon is best exposed north of the bad-land exposure of 

 the Judith River on the Crawford ranch between Fish Creek and Mud 

 Creek. ^^ It is also well exposed in the Lake Basin about thirty miles 



'^See Hatcher and Stanton's Bulletin on the Judith River Beds, p. 59. 



