CA RB ONIFER O US A ND PERM I A N FORMA TIONS I 4 9 



(divisions (7 and D), in reference to the correlation of which Meek 

 was in some doubt,' also belongs in the Missourian. Meek 

 plainly saw that there was no basis for referring the upper part 

 of the section to one formation and the lower part to another, for 

 le said: "I can see no reason whatever for drawing any impor- 

 tant line of division between the beds included in C and those 

 of B, or for separating either from the Coal Measures,"^ though 

 in the closing part of the report he was not sufificiently confident 

 to make an unqualified statement to that effect. However, sec- 

 tions in higher rocks to the north and west of Nebraska City, 

 which will be described farther on in this paper, show conclu- 

 sively that all the Nebraska City rocks belong in the Missourian. 

 Meek gave a very complete list of the fossils from divisions 

 B and C' at the former Nebraska City landing (near the present 

 Burlington and Missouri River railroad bridge) which are mostly 

 well-known Upper Coal Measure species. ^ A short distance 

 south of this locality is the quarry of the Nebraska City Vitrified 

 Brick Co. which uses about twenty feet of the upper shales of 

 division C of the sections of Marcou and Meek. These shales 

 are mostly of a drab color, somewhat micaceous as well as 

 clayey, and resemble those used for vitrified bricks at the Topeka, 

 Kansas, works. Above the shales of the quarry are ten feet of 

 very sandy shales, changing to soft sandstones, which represent 

 division D of the early sections. On the farm of the Hon. 

 J. Sterling Morton, about seventy-five feet above the level of the 

 Missouri River, and again on the river bank one mile below the 

 Nebraska City landing and thirty feet above river level, Meek 

 found a stratum of "black bituminous shale, with a few inches of 

 coal" having a total thickness of one foot, six inches, which was 

 not shown in the Nebraska City section and which he thought 

 must belong above it.-* The position of this shale has an impor- 

 tant bearing upon Meek's correlation, for in an argillaceous 

 limestone immediately above the black shale he found a fauna 



' Ym. Rep. U. S. Geol. Sur. Neb., etc., p. 130. -Ibid., p. 103. 



'^Ibid., p. loi ; also see "Tabular list," pp. 124-127. 

 ^ Ibid., pp. 103, 104. 



