THE PERMIAN SYSTEM IN KANSAS. 1 7 



and has a 20-foot zone of red shale 60 feet below its sum- 

 mit. Of the 395 feet of Wellington pierced by the drill at 

 Anthony, 365 feet is the typical blue shale, the remaining 

 30 feet being a nearly basal zone of red shale.* 



At Wellington itself, from which, as a locality within 

 the area of its outcrop, the formation is named, and in 

 whose vicinity are exposed some of the shales that have 

 suggested the term "gray beds,"' and, together with similar 

 shales of the Geuda, have given provincial but not very 

 accurate name to the Big Slate creek of Sumner county, a 

 considerable part of the more than two hundred feet of 

 shale passed through by the drill before reaching the rock- 

 salt, is alternately red and greenish (or bluish) gray.-j- 

 This red and gray mottled and banded character appears 

 also in the lower Wellington shale that outcrops in central 

 and western parts of McPherson county and at intervals in 

 the foot of the bluffs of Spring creek from Salina to a point 

 in the southwest vicinity of Bavaria, occupying in the latter 

 situation the interval between the Mentor beds and the zone 

 of shale, gypsum, and M3'alina-bearing shaly limestone that 

 forms the summit of the Geuda along the Smoky Hill river 

 south of Salina. But while the red colors so prevalent in 

 the rocks of the Cimarron series, invade the gray in certain 

 ejuarters of the Wellington, they affect but a small pro- 

 portion of the whole, and the Wellington is, notwith- 

 standing these and its calcareous inclusions, essentially a 

 thick body of blue-gray and slate-colored shales. ;|: 



The massive ledge of hard, cellular, gray dolomite on 

 the Little Arkansas river at the eastern border of Rice 



*Only 25 feet of the blue shale intervenes between this red zone 

 and the summit of the rock-salt. 



tThis statement of the drill-record at Welling-ton is made on the 

 authority of Mr. E. W. Davis, driller. 



JAt Pratt, salt has been found in drilling- without first passing 

 through any large body of blue jrray shales such as must be pierced to 

 reach ihe salt at Hutchinson, Kintjman, Anthony, etc. : but, as else- 

 where indicated, the salt that was there so reached does not belong to 

 the Geuda. (On a succeeding page, see account of the Salt Plain 

 measures.) 



