AMERICAN GEOLOGY DECADE OF 1860-1869. 



527 



In 1866, G. C. Swallow, who succeeded B. F. Mudge as State 



geologist, issued a Preliminary Report of the Geological Survey of 



Kansas, in form of an octavo volume of 198 pages, including a report 



by Dr. Tiffin Sinks on the Climatology, and one by 



Swallow's . 



Geological Survey Dr. C. A. Logan on the Sanitary relations of the State. 



of Kansas, 1866. . „ TT . . 



Ma], r. Hawn was assistant geologist. 



Special attention was given to the eastern and central part of the 

 State. He found rocks belonging to Quaternary, Tertiary, Creta- 

 ceous, Triassic (?), Permian, Lower Permian, and Carboniferous for- 

 mations, the lowermost division being the Lower Carboniferous. The 

 buff, mottled, and red sandstones underlying the Cretaceous were 

 doubtfully referred to the Triassic from their resemblance to the 

 foreign Triassic and the presence of a Nueula resembling the Speciosa 

 of Munster from the Muschelkalk of Bindlock. The presence of 

 Permian beds, it will be remembered, he had previously announced. 

 The coal-bearing rocks he estimated at 2,000 feet in thickness and 

 underlying an area of over 17,000 square 

 miles. In these he announced twenty-two 

 distinct and separate beds of coal, ranging 

 in thickness from 1 to 7 feet. 



This work of Swallow in Kansas has been 

 largely overlooked by recent workers. Ac- 

 cording to Keyes," a large portion of it was 

 not only good but marvelously well done for 

 its day and the conditions under which it Avas 

 accomplished. The historical importance of 

 Swallow's work "lies in the fact that some 

 of his geographic names applied to geologic 

 terranes will have to stand as valid terms, al- 

 though his correlations were often veiy bad." 



Swallow, like Mudge, was born in Maine, 

 but was of Norman-French descent. He studied the natural sciences 

 under Parker Cleaveland, at Bowdoin College, graduating in 1813, and, 

 after several years in educational work, accepted the 

 sketch of swallow, chair of chemistry, geology, and mineralogy in the 

 University of Missouri in Columbia. From 1856 to 

 lsf>L, the date of the discontinuation of the survey, he served as 

 geologist of Missouri, and in 1865 was appointed State geologist of 

 Kansas, as elsewhere noted. 



He is represented to us as a large, fine-looking man, over 6 feet in 

 height, and a very close observer of all natural phenomena. Accord- 

 ing to Professor Broadhead, "No other man during the same length 

 of time has ever gone into a strange field, traversed the country, and 

 published a volume all in a year and a half, as he did." Swallow was 



Fig. 77. — George Clinton Swallow. 



« American Geologist, June, 1900, p. 347. 



