THE WAVERLYAN PERIOD OF TENNESSEE. 



By Ray S. Bassler, 



Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology, U. S. National Mmeum. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Of late years much valuable information has been published con- 

 cerning the lower part of the Subcarboniferous or Mssissippian strata 

 of the United States, so that to-day we know their history in con- 

 siderable detail. Weller's various faunal and stratigraphic studies, 

 relating cliiefly to the Kinderhook of Illinois, Iowa, and JSIissouri, 

 have furnished a foimdation for the comparison of these strata in 

 other states. In Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky the stratigrapliic 

 succession is now fairly well known, but the correlations are in some 

 instances doubtful, and the faunas particularly require much more 

 study. In Tennessee a considerable thickness of early Mississippian 

 rocks is present, but here little has been published on their stratigraphy 

 and less on their faunas. The object of the present article is mainly 

 to present a short account of these strata in Tennessee to supplement 

 the paper by Mr. Frank Springer on ''The Crinoid Fauna of the Knob- 

 stone Formation," published elsewhere in this volume. IVIr. Springer 

 has briefly summed up the results of Safford's work upon these rocks, 

 but a more complete accoimt is given below. 



THE SILICEOUS GROUP OF TENNESSEE. 



The Subcarboniferous rocks of Tennessee were divided by Safford 

 into a lower Siliceous group and an upper Mountain limestone. The 

 latter formation is not discussed in this paper; indeed, the scope of 

 the present article is limited to the lower part of the Siliceous group. 



Although the term ''siliceous stratum" originated with Doctor 

 Troost and was employed by him in his reports, the first description of 

 these strata is by Safford in an article on "The Silurian Basin of Mid- 

 dle Tennessee, with Notices of the Strata surrounding it," ^ where he 

 divides the Paleozoic rocks of middle Tennessee underlying the Pen- 

 tremital limestone into five sections. The fifth section, included 



1 Amer. Joum. Sci., ser. 2, vol. 12, 1851, pp. 352-361. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 41— No. 1851. 

 94428°— Proc.N.M.vol.41— 11 14 209 



