8 Natural History Bulletin. 



In the days of the geological reconnaissance referred to, the 

 present town of Buffalo in Scott County, Iowa, was known as 

 New Buffalo. New Buffalo figures in all these earlier re- 

 ports, for near the village occurs an interesting fossiliferous 

 limestone, exposed along the river or in the sides of the 

 ravines; and the reports of Owen and Shumard^ and Hall^ 

 are in accord in referring this limestone to the age of the 

 Hamilton Group of New York. 



The Hamilton limestone of Buffalo with its pecuhar associa- 

 tion of fossils, disappears beneath the level of the river at 

 ordinary stages a short distance below Montpelier in Musca- 

 tine county. The last seen of it in that immediate region, it 

 forms a low^ ledge or reef, exposed at low water, and running 

 out into the Mississippi river a hundred yards or more at a 

 point almost directly in front of the present residence of Mr. 

 G. W. Robinson. If, however, we follow the bank of the 

 Mississippi, Vv^e shall find, a short distance above the mouth of 

 Pine Creek, an exposure of yellowish sandstone with inter- 

 stratified shaly beds. The position of this sandstone leaves no 

 doubt as to its relations to the Hamilton limestone. Although 

 along the river the contact is not seen, the sandstone is evi- 

 dently superimposed on the limestone. 



The relation of the sandstone, coupled as it is with an entire 

 change of lithological characters, led Hall to refer it to the 

 Chemung period,^ and a fossil spirifer that occurs abundantly 

 in the form of internal casts in one of the la3'ers, is described 

 as a new species under the name of Sfirifcr capax* and oc- 

 cupies a conspicuous place among the figures of species sup- 

 posed to represent the Chemung fauna of Iowa. 



A yellowish sandstone resting upon greenish shales occurs 

 in the bluffs along the river at Burlington. This sand- 

 stone contains casts of brachiopods in abundance, but it 



1 Owen's Geological Survey of Wisconsin, losva and Minnesota, Philadel- 

 phia, 1S52. 



2 Report on the Geological Survey of Iowa, by James Hall, 1S58. 



3 Hall's Geology of Iowa, Vol. I, part i, p. 89. 

 Id., Vol. I, part II, p. 520, Plate VII, Figs. 7 a-d. 



