THE PERMIAN SYSTEM IN KANSAS. 



41 



exhibited in the valley of the Cimarron river in Clark 

 county, Kansas, and in the slope north of the Great Salt 

 plain. Viewed as a whole, it is very irregularly 

 stratified, the component beds, while consisting of nearly 

 parallel lamina', being in some cases considerably inclined, 

 in others curved, and this oblique and irregular bedding, 

 being on a much larger scale than that of ordinary cross- 

 bedding, at first glance gives the impression of dips, anti- 

 clines and synclines that have been produced by lateral 

 pressure, the dips being, however, in various directions, 

 as north, east, etc., etc. It is certain that these older 

 formations of the. Plains must have been subjected to even 

 more of the dynamic strain due to oscillatory movements 

 of the earth's crust than the much-fractured Cretaceous 

 rocks of western Kansas, and it is also probable that minor 

 inflections and accidents of the strata have been wrought 

 by the leaching and undermining agencies of solution in 

 ages past, as they are seen in operation to-day producing 

 the numerous basins of western Kansas; but it seems to the 

 writer that neither leaching, which has been suggested by 

 the late Prof. Hay as the cause of similar irregular bedding 

 in lower beds at Caldwell,* nor lateral pressure, nor both 

 of these, should be held wholly responsible for the phe- 

 nomena, but that these are partly due to the conditions 

 under which the sediments were originally laid down. 



The Red Bluff beds exhibit the most intense colora- 

 tion of any of the rocks of the Cimarron series, being ap- 

 proached in this respect only by the Cedar Hills sandstones. 

 When the outcrops are wet with recent rains, their vivid- 

 ness of color is still greater, and the contrasts of their al- 

 most Vermillion redness with the other colors of the land- 

 scape is most striking. Spots and streaks of bluish or 

 greenish-gray sometimes occur in the red of these rocks, 

 but not to nearly the same extent as in the Salt Fork 

 division. 



*Geology of Kansas Salt, p. 5. 



