284 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
ON THE FINDING OF FOSSIL INSECTS IN THE COMANCHE CRE- 
TACEOUS OF KANSAS. 
BY C. .N. GOULD. 
During the summer of 1897, while in the employ of the state university, the 
writer was visited at Belvidere, Kan., by Dr. S. W. Williston. We drove some 
five miles southeast to the Black hills (Stokes hill of Cragin), and visited the 
locality where Prof. Robert T. Hill and the writer first found dicotyledonous 
leaves in the summer of 1894. Doctor Williston remarked that the presence of 
fossil vegetation would indicate that insects might be found in the vicinity. An 
hour or so was spent in looking over the various shale beds but nothing of im- 
portance was discovered. 
A few days after, while collecting shells in the vicinity, some shale was found 
which apparently contained traces of insects’ wings. They were sent to Doctor 
Williston, who forwarded them to Professor Scudder, of Harvard University, the 
best authority on fossil insects in America. Professor Scudder identified the 
material as insects, but stated that on account of the poor state of preservation 
he could not be sure of genus or species. These are, so far as known, the first 
fossil insects discovered in the state. 
The locality is about one-fourth of a mile south of the natural corral, on the 
ranch of Mr. Frank Abell. The horizon is Hill’s No. 6, or Prosser’s No, 11. 
See the University Geological Survey of Kansas, Vol. 2, p. 121.) The material 
is described as ‘‘very black, sleek, argillaceous shale, ‘paper shales’ of Hill, 
sparingly fossiliferous in the lower part.’’ It is immediately above Cragin’s 
Champion shell bed, which is well developed in the locality. Persistent work in 
the shales will doubtless reveal an interesting fauna. 
