KAN8A8 ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 257 



several times in tlie record that is of doubtful intepretation, as drillers do not 

 use it in its strict technical sense. It is the word conglomerate. It is more 

 than probable that it is here used for a dark shale containing hard nodular 

 masses which contain lime crystals and iron as limonite or pyrite. The terra 

 soapstone is the drillers' usual designation of lavender-colored soft shale. 



It does not appear that any coal was found in the boring; but the sand hori- 

 zons of the lowest 200 feet suggest that they are near the bottom of the coal 

 measures, where the chance for coal is greatest. It is a matter of regret that 

 the drill did not continue its work until the examination of an expert decided 

 that the coal measures had been entirely passed through. 



CRETACEOUS. 



I have already referred to the fact that the loess covers the greater part of 

 the county. It in places has some sand and gravel, and boulders are occa- 

 sionally seen at the bottom of it; but there seems to be no other formation in 

 this or the neighboring counties between the age of the coal measures and 

 these pleistocene deposits. There is, however, one fact in Atchison county that 

 seems to point to the existence, at no great distance from this region (perhaps 

 in this county itself), of cretaceous rocks once overlying the coal measures. 



Arrington Springs, in the western part of the county, comes cut of the debris 

 that partially fills a preglacial valley. It is a chalybeate spring, and its iron 

 is undoubtedly derived from the fine gravel, or coarse sand, through which it 

 flows to the surface. The deposition of the coarse sand is probably of the gla- 

 cial period, though it may be older. An examination of this sand suggests at 

 once to any one familiar with the cretaceous formations, that it is the debris 

 of the ferruginous Dakota sandstones. That it would keep that Dakota facies 

 improbable if it had been transported far from place of degredation. I have 

 seen such Dakota debris sand in the lower valley of the Smoky, where the pro- 

 pinquity of the original sandstone is not a matter of conjecture. Less than 20 

 miles further west than Arrington, I have found sharks' teeth and fragments 

 of Ammonites in the glacial gravels, which could not have been transported far 

 from their original Mesozoic beds, but such debris as these Arrington sands and 

 such well preserved fossils are now all the evidence to suggest that a great 

 thickness of strata once covered the carboniferous beds that have now only a 

 covering of pleistocene or more recent deposits. 



PLEISTOCENE. 



It has already been stated that there is a covering of loess over most of this 

 county. Its texture and general appearance are not unlike those in the other 

 river counties. But there seems a difference in all these from that on the east 

 side of the river, which is worthy of more attention than I have been able to 

 give to it. In the Stranger valley the loess hides all bedrock. Wells over 50 

 feet deep do not reach the bottom of it. It is mostly a clay; but to the west, 

 near the Jefferson county line, there is sand and gravel. 



The occurrence of boulders has not been sufficiently observed to warrant 

 any description of the morainic deposits which are mostly buried under the 

 loess. 



ALLUVIUM. 



The present valleys, as well as the upland depressions, have some recent 

 alluvial formations of sand, gravel, and joint clays and humus, the product of 

 the present agencies of running water, wind, rain, and frost on the older for- 

 mations. But what are properly called bottom lauds are of very limited ex- 

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