THE PERMIAN SYSTEM IN KANSAS. 



BY F. W. CRAGIN. 



North and east of the Arkansas river, Permian rocks 

 occupy a comparatively narrow tract and represent only 

 the lower and middle parts of the system ; but south of that 

 river they rapidly widen both their area and the strati- 

 graphic range of their outcrops. They are finely displayed 

 in the southern tier of Kansas counties,* from the eastern 

 border of Cowley to that of Meade, where they present a 

 section that is excelled now^here east of the Rocky mount- 

 ains save possibly in northern Texas. 



The W'Ork of the earlier writers on the Permian of 

 Kansas, Swallow and Hawn, Meek and Hayden, New- 

 berr}', Mudge, etc., has been reviewed quite recently by 

 Prof. Prosser, in his "Classification of the Upper Paleozoic 

 Rocks of Central Kansas, "j- but (in so far as concerns 

 Kansas) both those early authors and Prof. Prosser have 

 confined their attention to the lower and middle parts of 

 the system, as exposed in central and northern Kansas. ;|: 

 Meek and Hayden, Marcou and Geinitz, the earliest 

 students of the Permian ("Dyas") of Nebraska, had in 

 that State only low^er and middle outcrops of the Permian 

 available for study. In 1854 and '55, Shumard, Hitchcock 

 and Marcou^ treated of rocks in the Canadian-Red river 

 district that belong to the herein-described Cimarron series 

 Marcou referring them to Permian ("Dyas"') and Triassic, 

 Shumard and Hitchcock calling them Carboniferous. The 

 highest known terranes of the mid-plains Permian were 



♦Somewhat less fully in Oklahoma. 



+C. S. Prosser, Journal of Geolog-y, Vol. Ill, Nos. (5 and 7, 1S95. 



JProf. Mudge once visited Harper, Kansas, and there saw the 



Harper sandstones, but referred them to the Dakota, an identification 



which was at one time accepted by the present writer and some others. 



§ln Marcy's Red River Report. 1H54; and in Rep. Secy, of War, 1855. 



