THE PERMIAN SYSTEM IN KANSAS. II 



position. It consists primarily of clay-shales, but these 

 are of many colors and sorts, frequently passing into saline, 

 gypseous, and calcareous varieties, or e\en giving place to 

 limestone, gypsum, or rock-salt. The composition of the 

 formation in and near its area of outcrop is quite different 

 from that revealed by the drill in deep-lying parts remote 

 from that area. 



Its area of outcrop, doubtless somewhat narrowed 

 by the leaching out of rock-salt and the settling of sup- 

 erincumbent strata, is in part occupied by a belt of 

 more or less gypseous and saline shales interspersed with 

 beds of massive gypsum and impure limestone, and 

 which has as additional manifestations of its mineralized 

 character, occasional salt-marshes, saline springs, bitter 

 waters, and wells which (where not dug in the superficial 

 deposits of the Neocene) are not infrequently brackish or 

 saline. Near the south line of Kansas, this belt occupies a 

 breadth of some 12 to 18 miles in adjoining portions of 

 Sumner and Cowley counties, the greater portion of which 

 is in Sumner, and with variable breadth extends thence nearly 

 northward through the eastern parts of Sedgwick, Harvey, 

 McPherson and Saline counties, and western parts of Mar- 

 ion and Dickinson, to the region between Salina and Hope, 

 from which region it continues in a nearly northeasterly 

 course through portions of Clay, Riley, Washington and 

 Marshall counties. The so-called "Wellington marble," 

 described by the writer in 1885,* and which comes from 

 the eastern part of Sumner county, and the gypsum used 

 in the manufacture of plaster of Paris, stucco, and cement 

 in Dickinson and Marshall counties, as well as manv unused 

 beds of gypsum, belong to this belt. There are, however, 

 in the belt at least two distinct horizons of gypsum, and it 

 is the lower, or Hope, gypsum, that has been hitherto most 

 used in the manufacture of plaster of Paris. The salt- 



*BulIetin of the Washburn College Laboratory of Natural HlB' 

 tory. No. .'5, page 87 . 



