THE PERMIAN SYSTEM IN KANSAS. 47 



acter than is seen in most of the particolored rocks of the 

 Cimarron series, the two colors being arranged in two (lo- 

 cally three) broad bands, of which one is almost uniformly 

 red, and one almost uniformly grayish-white with occasional 

 flecks of red. 



At one locality on the eastern rim of the Big basin, 

 where it is overlaid by, and not abruptly separated from 

 an incoherent sandstone of the lower Cretaceous,* the Big 

 Basin sandstone is clearly also the highest surviving terrane 

 of the Cimarron series, and therefore of the Permian, if all 

 of the Cimarron series be really of Permian age as here 

 assumed. Moreover, the Big Basin sandstone is the highest 

 terrane of the Cimarron series whose occurrence in any 

 part of Kansas or Oklahoma can here be positively assert- 

 ed. Were it also the highest terrane of that series ever 

 deposited in this region, it would need be accredited as 

 record of the final shallowing of the great "Dead sea" of 

 the Plains, marking, as nearly as any terrane could, the 

 close of the Paleozoic era in this region. But the writer 

 has an impression (not positive enough to be called a recol- 

 lection) that he once observed a narrow remnant of red 

 Cimai ron shale above the Big Basin sandstone at some 

 point in Clark county; and if this impression be correct, it 

 confirms what might reasonably be inferred on other 

 grounds, namely, that terranes higher than the Big Basin 

 sandstone originally formed a part of the Cimarron series 

 in this region, and that these, with possibly one or two 

 minor exceptions, do not outcrop in Kansas, having been 

 partly removed by erosion in the time-interval indicated by 

 the great post-Cimarron unconformity and partly preserved 



*The soft, gray, fcrrufjinous-stained sandstone that here overliefl 

 the Bie Basin pandstone is a remnant of the Belvidere beds. In the 

 immediate vicinity it albO underlies a decomposed remnant of the 

 Kiowa shales, and may be either a western recurrence of the Cheyenne 

 or a sandstone member of the lowei" part of the Kiowa itself. Its 

 relation to a part of the Kiowa shales is fairly well shown in the west 

 wall of Little Baein, a little way to the eastward. 



