146 KANSAS UXIVERSITV QUARTERLY. 



massive, homogeneous, and of a very fine texture. It is easily- 

 worked by sawing, and is used as a building material for milk houses 

 and well curbs, though not very durable. It is of a clear, gray color 

 when damp, but bleaches out to a brilliant white on drying. The 

 chalk is laminated to an extent that causes it to split easily, especially 

 through the plane of the leaf impressions, which aids greatly in their 

 collection. In the upper layers the impressions are colored by iron 

 and, according to Cragin, by the residual carbonized material of the 

 leaves themselves. The leaves obtained are mostly from the genera 

 Salix, Sapindus, Ficiis, Platinoiiics, and Populus. 



Besides the leaves already known from this formation the writer 

 was so fortunate as to discover the remains of several small fish and 

 a shrimp-like crustacean. 



Just south of this large bed, over a slight rise is a thick out-cropping 

 of soft sandstone overlying the chalk, capped with Hint and having 

 seams of carbonaceous material similar to that in the chalk. The 

 thin layers contain fragments of mammalian, bone colored a deep 

 chocolate but in such a fragmentary condition as to make classification 

 impossible. In the more solid parts were found portions of the 

 carapace of a turtle, what appeared to be the head of the humerus 

 and j)ortions of the scapula and ribs of an animal the size of a horse, 

 also three tarsal and metatarsal bones from the foot of a large carniv- 

 orous animal. 



Following the line of the 'I'ertiary northward we find in the neigh- 

 borhood of Ashland and Vesta, in Clark county, tliat the Cheyenne 

 or C'omanche Cretaceous separates very indistinctly the Tertiary from 

 the Triassic. It is represented by a yellow sandstone growing 

 thicker towards the east and filled in places with shells. Above this 

 is a layer of the clayey soapstone, so called, also thickening towards 

 the east. This increases in thickness from a few feet at Vesta to 

 nearly thirty, a mile east. The outcrop of the Cretaceous is nowhere 

 more than a cjuarter of a mile wide and is continually obliterated 

 both by the Triassic and the Tertiary. The Tertiary is of the usual 

 soft, massive sandstone, whitish or pinkish in color and containing in 

 widely separated spots fragments of mammalian bones. There are 

 two distinct layers of the mortar rock, each at least twenty feet thick. 

 About sixteen miles south of Englewood, Clark county, there is a 

 sunken bed, a space is enclosed by the precipitous walls of the Ter- 

 tiary sandstone at least fifty feet in height, broken by gullies and 

 draws. The space enclosed includes at least six hundred acres, and 

 is very level. Curiously placed with regard to this "Big Basin," 

 though possibly without regard to it, is a large spring, about half a 

 mile distant, called "St. Jacob's Well," a well of about fifty feet in 



