350 
sandstone may fade into a soft sandy clay 
shale with the same bedding and structure as 
the stone itself and change back into a sand- 
stone a few rods away. Most of the sand- 
stones are so incoherent when freshly quarried 
that pieces two or three inches in diameter 
erush readily under foot. In many of the 
wells of the region the water is obtained in 
“quicksand.” Most of the shales contain 
much fine sand and offer little resistance to 
weathering. 
At their southern limit these red sandstones 
and shales are found to dovetail into the 
Permian conglomerates on the northern side 
of the Arbuckle mountains, while similar con- 
ditions obtain among the higher beds farther 
west where similar conglomerates occur on the 
flanks of the Wichita mountains. These con- 
glomerates are largely composed of the frag- 
ments of the pre-Carboniferous limestones 
aggregating 8,000 or 10,000 feet in thickness 
flanking the mountains and at one time coy- 
ering them. The solution of these limestones 
produces a red clay wherever the insoluble 
residue happens to remain undisturbed below 
the vegetable mold, and the disintegrating 
limestone conglomerates produce a more or 
less sandy red clay indistinguishable from 
some of the red bed sediments. Thus it seems 
not improbable that much of the material of 
the red beds in the region studied was derived 
from these thick limestones. 
Considering all these phenomena, it is ap- 
parent that the transition of deposits from the 
Arbuckle mountains to the Kansas line is 
such as would be expected in passing from 
the mountains out into a shallow epicontinen- 
tal sea. 
That the solution of limestone produces red 
residual clays is well known. It is exhibited 
in the residual soils and clays of the lime- 
stone regions of the unglaciated part of the 
Mississippi Valley, Cuba, southern Europe 
and elsewhere. The clays thus derived and 
their coloring matter—the red oxides of iron— 
are minutely divided and when in suspension 
settle slowly, but little movement of the 
water being sufficient to keep them in suspen- 
sion. This characteristic adapts them to 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Von. XXXV. No. 896: 
long transportation. The great thickness of 
the Arbuckle and associated limestones, and 
their former extent, over thousands of square 
miles of country where they are now removed 
or represented only by their upturned edges 
surrounding the mountains, seem to furnish 
an ample source of the coloring matter and a 
considerable amount of the clays of these 
lower Oklahoma red beds. The Gabbros, red 
granites and red porphyries of the Arbuckle- 
Wichita region also contributed their share of 
sediment to the red beds. 
From these observations it would appear 
that the sediments of the lower red beds of 
Oklahoma were derived largely from the Ar- 
buckle-Wichita Permian land mass and the 
coloring matter mainly from the solution of 
the limestones known to have been removed 
from it. It also seems probable that the sedi- 
ments of the region studied, especially those 
some distance from the mountains, were de- 
posited in very shallow turbulent water, or vast 
tidal beaches, inimical to life of all kinds, 
since they are void of fossils or even carbo- 
naceous matter. 
J. W. Brrpr 
THE ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF 
AMERICA 
THE sixth annual meeting of the Entomological 
Society of America was held at Washington, D. C., 
Tuesday and Wednesday, December 26 and 27, in 
room 376 of the new U. S. National Museum 
building. The following papers were presented: 
HERBERT OSBORN: Faunistic Studies in DPnto- 
mology. 
The need of an extended and accurate record of 
insect fauna is urged, with statement of instances 
where such data have been much needed. Atten- 
tion is called to the possibilities for widely scat- 
tered workers to assist in such studies and the 
desirability of some connected plan by which to 
encourage and bring together the results of such 
studies. A suggestion is made that the society 
appoint a permanent committee on faunistics, the 
duty of which will be to devise means for the 
encouragement of faunistic studies and to bring 
together the correlated results in this line with 
reports to the society as to methods proposed and 
the results secured. 
