GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY. 209 
plants in Dickinson county cannot at present be decided, since no attempt has 
been made to trace the connection between them. They are alike in appearance, 
and both have layers of gypsum streaked with dolomite at their base. Above the 
shales at Salina thin layers of limestone occur, containing fragments of plants 
similar to the plant-bearing limestone farther to the east. Professor Prosser re- 
ferred the section here southeast of Salina doubtfully to the Wellington shales, 
because of the absence of fossils. It is possible, however, that the plant-bearing 
shales of both localities will prove the same, and belong to the upper part of the 
Marion. Of the three recognizable species of plants found at Salina, two are 
found also at the Dickinson county locality. 
The best plants obtained so far are those from the Dickinson county localities. 
They are found here preserved in an impure limestone, very variable in its litho- 
logical characters, usually very hard, sometimes concretionary, or again grading 
into sandstone. In places numerous concretions are found; these are circular in 
outline, flattened, from a few inches to two feet or more across, and break with 
difficulty. The plants contained in them have the details well preserved, but are 
usually fragmentary. In other places, the plant-bearing stone is continuous, for 
some distance at least, varying in thickness from two or three to fourteen inches. 
The plants here are more complete. 
The plants from the Kansas Permian are of the more interest since very few 
plants of this age have been found in America. Some poorly preserved frag- 
ments from Fairplay, Colo., plants from the Permian or Permocarboniferous of 
West Virginia and Pennsylvania, and a few from Prince Edward island, Nova 
Scotia, are the only other localities from which Permian plants have been re- 
ported in America, except fossil wood from Cowley county, Kansas. There are, 
in the collections so far made, some twenty-six or twenty-seven determinable 
species, distributed in fourteen genera. The plants indicate unmistakably the 
true Permian age of the formation in which they are found. Many of the spe- 
cies are characteristically Permian, and only a very small proportion of the species 
identical with Upper Carboniferous species. The genera are naturally more 
closely related to those of the Carboniferous. The proportion of new forms is 
naturally large, owing to the few Permian plants that have been described from 
this country. A new genus of ferns, including five species, makes up a very con- 
siderable element of the flora. I have described this genus in the July (1900) 
number of the Kansas University Quarterly, vol. IX, p. 179, under the generic 
name Glenopteris. 
The Cretaceous, lying directly over the Permian, is also plant-bearing—a 
peculiar coincidence. Fragments of petrified wood weathered out of the softer 
sandstone are scattered very generally over the surface. Both wood and leaves 
occur together in dark shales on the Sterling ranch, east branch of Holland creek. 
I have not attempted a specific determination of the small box of leaves collected 
here; but the general appearance of the plants is unlike that of the Dakota flora, 
being more suggestive of Lower Cretaceous plants. 
