KINDERHOOK STRATIGRAPHY 
ArT frequent intervals during the past decade, there have 
appeared notes on certain beds, occurring in different parts of 
the Mississippi valley, which have passed under the general name 
of Kinderhook. For the most part these notes have dealt with 
local phenomena. In the present connection attention is called 
briefly to some problems of broader significance. 
Along the upper Mississippi River the formations immediately 
underlying the great Burlington limestones are exposed chiefly 
in two localities. One is at Burlington, Iowa, and the other at 
Louisiana and Hannibal, Missouri, and at Kinderhook, Il\linois, 
which is only a few miles from the last named place. Between 
the two localities the distance is 125 miles. In this distance a 
shallow syncline carries down the Kinderhook beds 200 feet 
below the level of the stream. 
The early investigations of this Burlington- Louisiana section 
were carried on simultaneously at the two ends, but by different 
persons. When the time came to parallel in detail the vertical 
sections at the extremes difficulties arose. The various beds 
could not be traced from one point to another because, for most 
of the distance, the strata were not open to inspection. The 
method of correlation by visible continuity was inapplicable. 
Comparison by similar lithologic sequence was likewise unsatis- 
factory, because the sections were so very different, and it was 
impossible to tell when or in what manner the changes took 
place. 
When the fossils of the two localities were compared, the 
results were singularly futile, so far as throwing light upon the 
problem of exact stratigraphic equivalency. The organic forms 
were unequally distributed. A large part of both sections had 
yielded no fossil remains at all. In the northern locality the 
known animal remains had been found chiefly at the very top 
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