GEOLOGICAL NOTES ON A PART OF SOUTHEAST KANSAS. 173 



way from Chanute to Thayer the sandstone crops out in thick beds. A similar 

 sandstone has also been extensively quarried at Neodesha in Wilson County 

 where it shows on the surface some remarkably interesting fucoids. 



From this general view of the Neosho Valley rocks we pass to a special de- 

 scription of the Thayer coal. 



The town of Thayer, Neosho County, is situated on the summit of a gently 

 sloping ridge, descending eastwardly to a valley by a long and gentle slope, the 

 same ridge descending more abrupdy to the west. The highest rock at Thayer 

 is a sandstone in flag-like layers. From the hill-top to the coal is fifty feet, the 

 lower twenty feet of which is occupied by thinly bedded sandstone, the layers be- 

 coming much thinner near the coal and also more argillaceous. 



The coal in the shaft is, when drifted on, from fourteen to eighteen inches 

 thick. In some places the overlying sandy shales rest directly on the coal. 

 When these shales are free from sand they often abound in fossil leaves of various 

 plants, chiefly of ferns, some of them in an excellent state of preservation. 



The coal is mined two to four miles south of Thayer, just west and northwest 

 and six miles west, or over an area of about six miles square, employing in De- 

 cember, 1881, about 100 miners. 



At Dickson's shaft the coal rests on four feet of underclay, below which the 

 miners report a thin limestone layer resting on about twenty feet of clay shales. 

 A half mile down the creek I observed a disintegrating limestone at six feet below 

 coal. For two miles west I observed no marked change but observed a limestone 

 in bed of creek at thirty feet below the coal. On the bluffs of the Little Cheto. 

 pah Creek, in Wilson County, four miles southwest of Thayer, we find the coal 

 separated by a clay band. Above the coal there is twenty-five feet of sandstone 

 — the upper in thick brown beds, the lower in thin blue lamina. 



The coal is here divided thus : 



10 inches — Coal. 

 6 inches — Blue clay shale. 

 6 inches — Coal 



The blue shale contains knife edges of coal. At Babcock's, six miles west and 

 one mile south of the Thayer road, the coal is still divided, thus : 



I. Thick bedded sandstone. 



15 feet thin bedded sandstone. 



5 inches coal. 



I inch laminated clay. 

 8 inches coal. 



6 inches laminated clay. 

 6 inches coal. 



I inch black laminated coaly shale. 

 4 inches coal. 



10. Fire clay. 



